I 



I 



ESSAYS 




LIFE, SLEEP, PAIN, 



ETC. 



BY 



Samuel iSjcnvQ Pukeon, HI. W., 

PROFESSOR OF INSTITUTES AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE 

IN THE MEDICAL COLLEGE 

OF THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, ETC. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
BLANCHARD AND LEA, 

1852. 



^ik> 




Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by 

BLANCHARD AND LEA, 

m the Office of the Clerk of tlie District Court of the United Stales 
in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



PHILADELPHIA : 
T. K. AIN'D P. & C0LLn\3 PKINTEKS. 



ff^ 



;9 



PREFACE 



TN tlie following pages, the attempt has been made 
to engage the attention of the intelligent reader 
in the discussion of subjects usually, though erro- 
neously, regarded as of technical rather than of 
universal interest. This exclusive character has 
become attached to them more from the manner in 
which they have been presented, than from any- 
thing in their own nature ; and they are here 
brought forward in a point of view which, if some- 
what novel, will, it is hoped, be found as generally 
acceptable as it is rational and obvious. 

JUNE, 1851. 



CONTENTS. 



Life, ." 9 

Sleep, . - 49 

Pain, 91 

Intellectiox, . . . . . . . . 1^5 

Hygiene. 191 

Death, . . 256 



Cifg, 



LIFE. 



a TF the knowledge of things becoming and honor- 
-^ able/' says Aristotle^ quoted by Barclay, ^^be held 
deservedly in high estimation, and if there be any species 
of knowledge more exquisite than another, either on ac- 
count of its accuracy, or of the objects to which it relates 
being more excellent or more wonderful, we should not 
hesitate to pronounce the history of the Animating Prin- 
ciple justly entitled to hold the first rank/^ 

The belief in the existence of a definite " principle of 
life'^ thus announced, was, in some form or other, uni- 
versal among the ancient philosophers. Whether mate- 
rial, ethereal, or spiritual, it was assumed as a necessary 
fact. Indeed, it continued to interweave itself so com- 
pletely with the current opinions of succeeding ages, that 
when Lawrence, the popular lecturer of the London Col- 
9 



10 Life. 

legG; first denied it^ he was denounced as an infidel and 
an atheist, and his work laid under absolute, though in- 
direct sentence of outlawry. But now his views are 
apparently in the ascendant, and we shall find a large 
proportion among the more recent authorities in full 
accordance with him; by some of whom, indeed, his ^^ pro- 
hibited^^ book is mercilessly plundered without a syllable 
of acknowledgment. 

What, then, is life I regarded as a condition mysteri- 
ous, incomprehensible; vl power undefined, apart from all 
others ; at once capable of indomitable opposition to all^ 
and yet liable to be utterly repressed or crushed by slight 
contingencies; a force, and the manifestation of that 
force ; a creative or constructive princivlej and yet the 
creature or result of agencies and formative circum- 
stances; a mere series of movements and actions, con- 
nected and dependent? 

We speak of the dynamic changes of disease as Sowing 
directly from the abnormally-exerted energies of the vital 
force, but without clearly comprehending what is this 
vital force, and how it differs from such other forces as 
are known to the natural philosopher. All extremes of 
opinion upon this subject have been held ; but the great 
majority of physiologists at the present day are ready to 
subscribe the doctrine maintained by the profound and 
ingenious Matteucci, that, while living beings are ^^ en- 
dowed with the general properties of all natural bodies,^^ 
and, therefore^ amenable to all known natural laws^ yet 



Life. 11 

the phenomena which they offer to our observation "are 
not all explicable by reference to physical and chemical 
forces merely/' In all life there is something peculiar 
which modifies the action of these forces. 

In the present stat^ of our knowledge, this is, indeed, 
the only tenable position intermediate between those who, 
on the one hand, ascribe all vital changes to mechanical 
and chemical influences, and, on the other, those who 
deny the compatibility of impulses which they represent 
as, being in absolute contrast and contradiction. 

The phrases "principle of life'' and "vital principle'' 
are in familiar usage in all our discussions, but, as Mayo 
has well remarked, "this term principle has been gene- 
rally employed as the letters of the alphabet are by 
algebraists, to denote an unknown element, which, when 
thus* expressed, is more conveniently analyzed;" or, as I 
should prefer to say, more conveniently examined in its 
several relations. It is curious to see how it is regarded 
by the numerous theorists who have successively endea- 
vored to philosophize concerning it. 

Willis attributes all living actions to the "callidum 
innatum," as he denominates it, "a material element of 
an igneous nature," and fortifies his opinion by adducing 
in its favor some of the highest names of antiquity — 
Hippocrates, Democritus, Epicurus, and Pythagoras. 

Scaliger and Fernel have imagined a superior " callidum 
innatum" as the principle of life; not the material igneous 
element of Willis, but a "more divine heat, spiritual, 



12 Life. 

aerial; ethereal^ or composed of something elementary or 
ethereal/^ Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation; 
bluntly maintains that ^Hhe blood is the animating prin- 
ciple, or the substance of which the anima, or life, is 
only the act/^ John Hunter, that eminent example of 
'^patient labor,^^ after examining this subject, as was his 
wont, with the most pains-taking and persevering atten- 
tion, arrives at the conclusion that ^Hhere is a principle 
of life connected with all the parts of a living body^ solid 
as well as fluid; a materia vitae diffusa/^ Abernethy 
accepts and endorses this view. ^^My mind,^' he says, 
^^ rests at peace in thinking on the subject of life as Mr. 
Hunter has taught ;^^ but he dwells with no little em- 
phasis on what he calls the correspondence between ^^the 
phenomena of electricity and of life,^^ a hint caught up 
and wrought out at much length by Wilson Phillip, and 
recently carried through the analogies of galvanism and 
magnetism, and pored over in the most mysterious and 
significant way by the mesmerists. 

Cuvier tells us that "life consists in the sum total of 
the functions/^ and Bichat, a little more explicitly, 
affirms it to be "Tensemble des fonctions qui resistent a 
la mort.^' In this latter spirit, an ancient writer points 
it out as '^illud-putredine contrarium;" and Carlyle, 
speaking ironically of "some small soul,^^ has the same 
idea, "it saves salt.^' 

Coleridge, one of the profoundest thinkers of the age, 
capable of the fullest consideration of this obscure topic 



Life. 13 

in every point of view, physically as well as metaphysi- 
cally, zoologically as well as philosophically, sums up the 
results of his inquiry in a truly transcendental form. 
^'My hypothesis will, therefore/^ he says, ^^be thus ex- 
pressed : that the constituent forces of life in the human 
body are, first, the power of length, or reproduction; 
second, the power of surface (that is, length or breadth), 
or irritability; third, the power of depth, or sensibility. 
With this observation, I may conclude these remarks, 
only reminding the reader that life itself is neither of 
these separately, but the copula of all three; that life, as 
life, supposes a positive or universal principle in nature, 
with a negative principle in every particular animal; the 
latter, or limitive power, constantly acting to individualize, 
and, as it were, figure the former. Thus, then, life itself 
is not a things a self-subsistent hypostasis, but an act and 
a process. ^^ 

Here we are left at the end, as the reader will notice, 
entirely without any reference to the agent performing 
the act, or the motive power which determines it, or 
carries on the ^process. This is the point at which we will 
perceive the deficiency of all those theories which prefer 
to place life before us merely as an effect, or concatena- 
tion of effects; the absolute necessity of a first-moving 
agent, capable of generating action, a cause adequate to 
the production of the alleged effects, seeming to escape 
the mind during the discussion. 

Carpenter, who, of all English physiologists, is most 

2-¥ 



14 Life. 

popular in our country^ defines life to be '^ the state of 
action peculiar to an organized body or organism/' He 
intends, he says, ^Ho designate rather the state or condi- 
tion of the being exhibiting those actions than the actions 
themselves/' He saw that his predecessor, Lawrence, 
had left unprovided for the condition of " dormant 
vitality/' in which living action is, to all appearance, 
suspended. 

Observe the confusion made by these philosophers, one 
after the other, between the vital actions and the vital 
principle — between the phenomena of life and the cause 
of these phenomena. Sir Humphrey Davy taught that 
"life consists in a perpetual series of corpuscular changes.'' 
"Life is a forced state," cries Brown. "Life," echoes 
Rush, "is the effect of certain stimuli acting upon the 
excitability and sensibility." The elephant is thus 
placed adroitly enough on the back of the tortoise; but, 
when we ask what is the force of Brown, and whence the 
excitability and sensibility of Rush, we are scarcely 
satisfied to be referred to "stimuli," which are incapable 
of affecting any form of matter, unless previously endowed 
with the very properties which manifest the living con- 
dition. 

Some of the inexactness on which I am now comment- 
ing resides, doubtless, in the minds of the authors quoted; 
but it would be unjust not to admit that a portion of it 
is to be ascribed to the imperfection of language. In 
French and English at least, the same word, la vie, life, is 



Life. 15 

used familiarly to express both the cause and the effect. 
In the richer tongue of the Greek we find the term psuhe 
— whence psychical — employed to denote the cause of the 
vital phenomena, and zoe the effects or results of the 
action of that cause. Psuhe meant the internal, and, 
analogically, the moral and aesthetic life; zoe, the ex- 
ternal, or obvious animal life. Bios, brought into tech- 
nical employment more recently — as when the vital 
power is spoken of as " the biotic force'^ — seems to me 
to be thus misapplied. It included the course or history 
of life, as in biography ; or, at any rate, was rather in- 
dicative of intellectually active than physiological exist- 
ence. We need some such distinctions in our flexible, 
but not quite perfect, instrument of thought — the Eng- 
lish language; with all its faults, the noblest, most 
various, most comprehensive, majestic, and beautiful of 
human dialects. 

^^Life,^' argues Lawrence, ^^presupposes organization, 
as the movements of a watch presuppose the wheels, 
levers, and other mechanism of the instrument.^' It is 
indeed true that the movements of a watch presuppose 
mechanism, and that the phenomena of life presuppose 
a specified organization through which they must be 
manifested; but it is equally true that, without the prin- 
ciple of elasticity in the mainspring of the former, and 
the principle of vitality in the tissues of the latter, there 
could be no movement — no phenomena. 

Reil, and after him Kudolphi, treat of life as ^^a 



16 Life. 

subtle material superadded to the organism, making an 
original and essential difference in the form and compo- 
sition of organic bodies/' Yet Reil speaks elsewhere of 
life as depending upon this specific difference in form and 
composition. 

Eroussais, approaching the truth, while he represents 
contractility as 'Hhe fundamental property of the 
organic tissues/' regards ^Hhe vital power, or force, as a 
fiv$,t cause, which creates that property and then employs 
it as an instrument.'' 

Prout, going back to the very archaeus of Stahl, an- 
nounces it as ^'an ultimate principle, ^an organic agent,' 
endowed by the Creator with a faculty little short of 
intelligence, by means of which it constructs the organism 
with which it is connected." 

Miiller describes it as ^^a principle — an imponderable 
matter — which is in action in the substance of the germ, 
and imparts to organic combinations properties which 
cease at death." He denies that there is any more ob- 
scurity in the physiological views of this subject than in 
the philosophical doctrines concerning light, heat, and 
electricity. 

Humboldt, in an early essay, which obtained the lauda- 
tory attention of the poet Schiller, maintained the idea 
that the ^Wital forces" subtract particles ^^from the 
domain of inorganic nature, overcome for a time their 
natural affinities, and hold them together in new com- 
binations until they are themselves exhausted; after 



Life. 17 

which these particles return to their former state/' 
These views, however, he seems, in advanced life, to 
have abandoned for the admission that the supposed 
^Wital forces'' are but ^^modifications of the ordinary 
forces of matter acting under peculiar conditions/' 

I know not how better ^^to define my own position," 
to express my own views on the controverted topic, than 
thus : Life, vitality, the vital principle, the cause of liv- 
ing action, is an active and peculiar force existing in cer- 
tain bodies; not a qiialit?/, like hardness, softness, &c., 
but a power belonging to them derivatively, as I shall 
show hereafter, a property with which they are endowed 
on coming into existence in the forms known as organic. 
It is not oxygen, as Girtanner suggests; Matteucci gives 
abundant reasons for inferring that it is not electricity, 
as Abernethy and Wilson Phillip were disposed to 
believe, and as it is now quite fashionable to suggest in 
the use of the terms electro-biology, &c.; nor is it a 
presiding genius, an archaeus, an almost or quite intelli- 
gent agent, as Stahl and Prout have hinted; nor a mere 
pre-established harmony, as Aristoxenus and Leibnitz 
imagined; nor the product of organization, as Lawrence, 
Pritchard, Mayo, and so many others maintain; nor is it 
to be found, as Cuvier, Bichat, and Coleridge intimate, 
rather darkly, I think, in the toiU ensemble of the func- 
tions or anything else — to borrow the parliamentary 
expression of Mr. Joseph Hume, of financial fame, ^^ the 
sum total of the whole/' . ' 



18 Life. 

I find a Supreme Being absolutely necessary in phi- 
losophy, as Kobespierre did in social life. I cannot look 
upon vitality as a mere quality, the physical or mechani- 
cal result of any constitution, or arrangement, or compo- 
sition of the structures to which it is found to belong. 
It is so far independent of such composition or organiza- 
tion, that it not only connects itself with conditions of 
structure or composition infinitely varied, but may be 
withdrawn, leaving all these conditions, as far as we are 
aware, unaltered. The very simplest of its manifestations 
are inexpressibly difficult to account for or comprehend; 
its very earliest influences altogether inscrutable; its 
apparent spontaneity of action, and its passive resistance 
to the effect of external agencies, equally inexplicable; 
and, as we contemplate it more and more closely, we are 
filled with a deepening conviction that there is nothing 
in the vast storehouse of nature more calculated to 
awaken intense curiosity, to invite assiduous investiga- 
tion, and to give rise to solemn consideration, than the 
construction and movements of a living body, ^^ fearfully 
and wonderfully made,^^ and still more fearfully and 
wonderfully endowed with almost infinite capacities for 
action, for enjoyment, and for suffering. Let us humbly 
acknowledge that of this principle in the abstract we have 
hitherto formed very inadequate and unsatisfactory con- 
ceptions, and shall perhaps always remain unsuccessful 
in our researches concerning it. It may be that He alone 
who possesses within himself this mysterious attribute, 



Life. 19 

and who, of his infinite power and benevolence, has com- 
municated it to a part of his creation, can fully compre- 
hend its nature and its essence. 

Of the abundance of life, take the following illustra- 
tions : Of phanerogamic plants, the number can scarcely 
be calculated at less than 250,000; of cryptogamic, 
50,000. The number of existing species of insects can- 
not be less than 3,000,000, it is more probably 5,000,000; 
of reptiles, perhaps, 2000 species; of birds, 10,000; of 
fishes, 12,000; of mammals, 2000; of mollusca, 20,000. 
Truly it may be affirmed that, in the vast domain of 
nature, life is the rule, its absence the exception. What 
then shall we say when we reflect upon the vast mass of 
microscopic organism everywhere spread abroad, and that 
world beyond the reach of our senses, however aided — the 
ultra-microscopic — in which we cannot help inferring, 
while we cannot definitely perceive, the presence and 
influence of vitality I 

"Everything/^ says the aged savant, Humboldt, in his 
Views of Xature, already quoted, "everything proclaims 
a world of active organic forces. If, in the greatest ap- 
parent stillness of nature, we listen closely for the faintest 
tones, we detect a dull muffled sound, a buzzing and 
humming of insects close to the earth, in the lower strata 
of the atmosphere. In every shrub, in the cracked bark 
of trees, in the perforated ground, inhabited by hymenop- 
terous insects, life is everywhere audibly manifest. ^^ 

When we observe closely the relations of the vital 



1^0 Life. 

principle^ we shall find two qualities^ or properties, uni- 
formly present, and manifesting themselves by obvious 
phenomena in masses or structures which we call organic 
as contra-distinguished from inorganic or dead matter. 
The coincidence of these may be safely regarded as de- 
monstrative of the presence of this principle, and infalli- 
ble proofs of its active condition. 

They are, first, motion — or rather motivity, the power 
of motion — self-generated; and, second, the capacity of 
self-protection, by resistance to, or reaction against, the 
influence of foreign or extraneous agents. If the latter 
were ever simply passive, it would be enough of itself to 
denote the living condition ; but it is difficult to conceive 
of such resistance without some internal movement or 
action of positive opposition to agents applied externally. 
We infer, then, the first from our perception of the second 
of these properties, and conclude that they always and 
of necessity co-exist. 

And here I take occasion to remark upon the incor- 
rectness of Carpenter^s statement, in reference to these 
capacities of spontaneous action, when he declares that 
'^the changes exhibited by any living being have one 
manifest tendency — the preservation of its existence as a 
perfect structure.'^ Far more than this, and, indeed, in 
direct contrast with it, all these — its internal movements 
and changes which thus incidentally resist external agen- 
cies — tend ultimately, and with inevitable certainty, to 
its own destruction ; it must thus wear out and die. 



Life. 21 

Inanimate masses of matter, unless impelled by some • 
extrinsic force, must remain forever motionless. They 
possess within themselves no energy which can enable 
them to change their place or give rise to any alteration 
in the relative position of the ultimate atoms of which 
they are composed. Every particle, on the other hand, 
which is by any means endowed with vitality, or is made 
a constituent portion of a living body, becomes at once a 
centre of motion, as it were, an impelling agent; restless, 
active, and incessantly employed; self-consuming, and 
spontaneously efficient in impressing upon itself destruct- 
ive changes. 

The monad — the minute animalcule, which, among 
millions of his fellows, finds abundant space in a drop of 
water — Ehrenberg's point of life, of which mineral masses 
are sometimes compounded; these, when brought by the 
microscope within the reach of our vision, are known to 
be living by their motion alone, or chiefly. The earliest 
vivification of the larger germ becomes cognizable in the 
punctum saliens, the circulatory nisus commencing there, 
and continuing its throbbings until the last pulsation is 
lost in the tranquil stillness of death. 

The thrusting forth of the corculum, or sprout, is only 
one test of the living condition of the vegetable seed, 
from henceforth destined to ceaseless motions; the juices 
of the plant, shrub, and tree being kept in constant agita- 
tion ; absorbed by the roots, expanding into leaves, and 
thus exposed to the influences of air and light, and de- 
3 



22 Life. 

positing in tbeir course the appropriate materials of 
growth and increase, flowering and fruitage. 

The second of the essential living properties mentioned 
above, the capacity, namely, to resist the influence of 
external agents, manifests itself in a great variety of 
modes, many of which are, doubtless, familiar to my 
readers. All bodies while alive enjoy a definite and 
regulated temperature of their own, independent of the 
difi'used caloric of the atmosphere. The blood of the 
mammalia is about 98° of Fahrenheit. Birds are warmer 
than man : reptiles much colder. The nose of a dog is 
always cold. The sap of a tree, throughout the severest 
winter, not only does not freeze, but retains tenaciously 
its proper degree of heat. A man's body does not 
become a degree hotter in an oven where meats are baked, 
nor a degree colder in an icehouse. A t^nia will live, 
it is said, in boiling veal-broth. Such facts are very 
numerous. 

The play of chemical affinities, as shown in the ordi- 
nary processes of decay and decomposition, are efficiently 
resisted by the vital principle, even when most subdued 
and reduced to the lowest condition of passive, or, as we 
phrase it, ^^ suspended'^ animation. This is, indeed, a 
rule so definitely ascertained that we now refuse to admit 
of any certain proof of death except the re-establishment 
of those chemical laws in their previously abolished or 
controlled sway, as shown by molecular change and 
putrefaction. 



Life. 23 

How profoundly interesting in this point of view is the 
condition of dormant vitality — the potentiality of de- 
velopment — the principle of life present but seemingly 
passive, yet repelling, with a force incalculably tenacious 
and energetic, the invasion of all external agencies within 
its circumscribed seat. Seeds kept in the herbarium of 
Tournefort more than one hundred years were found 
fertile. Professor Lindley says that raspberries were 
raised from seeds taken from the stomach of a man whose 
skeleton was found thirty feet under ground buried with 
some coins of the Emperor Hadrian ; whence it is pro- 
bable the seeds were 1600 or 1700 years old. Nay, 
bulbous roots, found inclosed with mammies in their 
Egyptian envelops, perhaps in a seclusion of 3000 years, 
produced fac-similes of their parent plants. 

Similar stories are told us of the ova of many animals. 
The infusory animalculae seem to be capable of an in- 
definite protraction of dormant life. The rotifer, for in- 
stance, may be dried so completely as to splinter when 
touched with the point of a needle, and in this state 
would, doubtless, preserve its integrity for 1000 years, 
and revive readily when moistened again. Every one 
has read Dr. Franklin's record of experiments on the 
drowning and revival of the common house-fly. Lister 
and Bonnet have seen caterpillars recover that had been 
so hard frozen that, when dropped into a glass vessel, 
they chinked like stones ; and fish are transported great 
distances, in Northern Europe, frozen and yet alive. The 



24 Life. 

hybernation of a large class of animals is a similar, but 
not exactly identical state, animation not being entirely 
suspended; as is seen in the obvious performance of some 
of the physiological functions, absorption among them; 
and that of others, as the circulation, being necessarily 
implied. In drowned persons, there is an irregular ex- 
hibition of the same tenacious vitality in its passive form. 
Some seem to die absolutely immediately on being im- 
mersed, while others have recovered after intervals va- 
riously protracted. It would be highly interesting to 
know wherein consisted the vast difference between 
those whose vitality was destroyed and those who still 
retained it. 

The most fearful examples of this kind, however, are 
met with in cases described under the title of trance; 
a condition in which many persons, apparently dead, have 
been buried alive. Pliny mentions a young man of rank 
whO; having expired some time, as was thought, was 
placed upon the funeral pile. The heat of the flames 
revived him, but he perished before his friends could 
rescue him. The great anatomist Vesalius had the un- 
speakable misfortune to commence the dissection of a 
living body apparently dead. Less unhappy was the fate 
of the Abbe Pre vest, who fell apoplectic, but recovered 
his consciousness — too late — under the scalpel. Prepa- 
rations were made to embalm the body of Cardinal 
Somaglia. The operator had scarcely penetrated into the 
chest when the heart was seen to beat. Returning par- 



Life, 25 

tially to his senses^ he had sufficient strength to push 
away the knife; but the lung was mortally wounded. 
In one of our journals is recorded the strangely-interest- 
ing case of the Rev. Mr. Tennent, of New Jersey, who 
lay three days in his shroud, and was saved from inter- 
ment almost by miracle. We find a collection by Bruhier 
of no less than fifty-tioo cases of persons buried alive; 
four dissected prematurely ; fifty-tliree who recovered after 
being coffined; and seventy-tico falsely considered dead. 

Carpenter denies strenuously that there is any neces- 
sity for supposing a new force, principle, or law, to ac- 
count for vital phenomena, and ascribes them all to the 
known properties of common matter, and the familiar 
laws of mechanical and chemical affinity, attraction and 
repulsion, action material and passive, reciprocal and 
catalytic. 

But how are we to reconcile with these views the abso- 
lute arrest of action of which I have been speaking? 
The elements, with all their affinities and repulsions, are 
present or in contact; what suspends their influence 
upon each other? The favoring contingencies of the 
presence of air and heat, nay, all the ordinary and extra- 
ordinary agents of decomposition, are thus occasionally 
defied. 

I find an insurmountable difficulty in the way of this 
doctrine in the fact that none of the products of organic 
action, represented by it as nothing more than a series of 
chemical changes, have been wrought out in the labora- 

3* 



26 Lite. 

tory; none of the vital changes successfully imitated. 
Carpenter himself acknowledges that, though ^4t may be 
possible for a chemist to produce the gum or sugar which 
he finds in the ascending sap of plants, he can never hope 
to imitate the latex, or elaborated sap, which already 
shows traces of organization and of vital properties/^ 
But why should he not if, as we are told, their composi- 
tion results from the same familiar laws and processes ? 
V/hat constitutes the hopeless difference here? 

I have hitherto been speaking, as will have been 
noticed, of the very lowest of the vital properties ; such 
as may be specifically indicated as distinguishing living 
from inanimate matter. These properties, indeed, con- 
stitute the only characteristic bases for such distinction, 
and the most carefully drawn definitions, founded on any 
other, fail both of accuracy and clearness. Thus, when 
Kant tells us that " the cause of the particular mode of 
existence of each part of a living body resides in the 
whole, while in dead masses each part contains the cause 
itself,'^ he forgets the beautiful series of crystals, each 
portion of which constitutes, as much as in many living 
beings, a necessary part of the whole; he forgets, also, 
the existence of the polypus, and other animated crea- 
tures, which may be separated, and which separate them- 
selves, indeed, into many parts, each capable of independ- 
ent and self-sustaining life. 

Others describe organized bodies as exhibiting a pecu- 
liar symmetry, consisting in the correspondence of curved 



Life. 27 

lines or outlines^ wliile inorganic symmetry is always 
rectilinear. This may, undoubtedly, be received as a 
general rule. But some of the microscopical animalculae 
are little more than mere straight lines and points, and 
there is a charming symmetry in the curved lines of the 
sparkling rosettes found as stalactitical incrustations on 
the walls of one of the most remote chambers in the 
Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. 

Between the animate and inanimate portions of created 
things, a wide chasm exists. To all animated nature 
belong the powers of growth, or increase, and reproduction. 
So prominently, indeed, is this last function placed among 
the offices of vitality, that Virey contends that ^^life is 
never the property of the individual, but belongs to the 
species ;'' and the act of transmitting it is often, both in 
plants and animals, the first, last, and only apparent 
purpose of existence. 

Inanimate masses, on the other hand, form no species 
or families; each individual subsists separately, increases 
and diminishes, or changes its form, under the influence 
of extraneous causes exclusively; enlarges and grows by 
external accretion only, and by juxtaposition of particles, 
whether regularly or irregularly, whether in shapeless 
lumps or exact crystals. 

It is the melancholy privilege of living beings to die; 
and the very pabulum and stimulant influences which 
elicit life, and develop the highest functions of vitality, 
conduct most certainly and most rapidly to death. To 



28 Life. 

live intensely is to live most rapidly and to die most 
promptly. 

" Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpiuit corpora sana : 
Corpora sana dabunt balnea, vina, Venus." 

How strong the contrast ! Inanimate masses require no 
sustenance or support; when once brought into being 
endure passively; need no renewal of parts^ as they 
undergo no waste or wear; pass through no internal 
changes; and, if unassailed by violence from without, 
would; so far as we know, remain unaltered to eternity. 

But, from the lowest class of organized creatures up to 
man — who is himself but '^a little lower than the angels 
of Heaven^' — the gradation in the scale of being is so 
regular, and the successive steps so slight, that we are 
even unable to draw, with clearness and precision, the 
line which separates the animal from the vegetable king- 
dom, or point out satisfactorily the characteristic distinc- 
tion, if there be any such, between animal and vegetable 
life. Many of the zoophytes, or plant-animals, were ar- 
ranged first among mineral bodies by Woodward and 
Blaumvelt, then received by Eay and Lister as vegetable 
substances, and are now admitted into the class of ani- 
mals, rather on account of their chemical properties than 
for any more obvious or satisfactory reason. The uncer- 
tainty of these chemical tests, or their inapplicability 
here, would seem to be shown by the fact that there are at 



Life. 29 

least two vegetables wliicli resist combustion in the same 
manner as most minerals. The fontinella antipjrec- 
tica, used in northernmost Europe for lining chimneys, 
and the byssus (asbestos), a moss found in the Swedish 
copper mines, which vitrifies when exposed to a red heat. 
Strangest of all, Nitzsch tells us that, of the same genus 
infusoria, some species, as, for example, the bacillaria 
pectinalis, have the characteristics of plants, while others 
are clearly enough animals. 

Mirbel, Smith, and Eicherand offer the following points 
of distinction : '' that plants derive nourishment from in- 
organic matter, earths, salts^ and airs. Animals live 
upon matter already organized.^^ "Plants may, there- 
fore/^ says E-icherand, prettily enough, "be considered 
the laboratories in which nature prepares aliments for 
animals.^^ This striking harmony of relation is un- 
doubtedly the rule, but there are some apparent excep- 
tions. The earthworm, and numerous other tribes of 
analogous character and habits, subsist upon materials 
derived from the mineral kingdom; nay, Humboldt in- 
forms us that some of the wretched hordes of southern 
America support their miserable lives, at least for a con- 
siderable portion of the year, upon a diet of clay. 

Equal uncertainty seems to attend the other sugges- 
tions offered as to distinctive properties ascribed exclus- 
ively to either form of living matter. Contractility is 
evidently common to both. Motivity, or rather voluntary 
motion, is affirmed of certain vegetables, while several 



30 Life. 

instances are said to be found of animals to whom nature 
has denied not only every mark of consciousness and sen- 
sation, but all locomotion also. The sensitive plant, the 
hedysarum gyrans, the orchis, and the valisneria not only 
exhibit spontaneous motion of leaf and stem, but the 
three latter, we are told, actually move from one place to 
another. Among the infusoria, there are several speci- 
mens, which Ehrenberg and others regarded as positively 
animalcular, which are now believed to be vegetable germs 
or seeds, endowed with the power of voluntary motion to 
enable them to fix upon the proper localities adapted to 
them. Even the volvox, so well known to microscopists, 
is stated thus to settle down and develop an alga. 

^' The zoologist/^ says Professor Lindley, ^^ declares that 
the power of spontaneous motion, and the feeding by a 
stomach, are qualities confined to the animal kingdom. 
As for a stomach, it is impossible to say that the whole 
interior of a living independent cell is not a stomach.^^ 
As to motion, ^^ numerous plants move with all the ap- 
pearance of spontaneity. The spores of those conferv^e 
which are sometimes called zoosporous swim in water 
with great activity, and the filaments of zygnemata com- 
bine with the energy of animal life.^^ 

The spores of the achy la prolifera, when they find 
their way into the water from the spore-chamber, which 
they do by spontaneous motion of great vigor, are gene- 
rally egg-shaped, and swim with the small end foremost: 
^^It is curious to see how constantly this is pushed for- 



Life. 31 

wards iu the rapid evolutions made in the water by these 
living particles/^ Their short life terminates in a few 
seconds or minutes, or at most half an hour; and linger 
assures us that he has ^^ seen them in the agonies of death, 
struggling convulsively, with all the appearance of animal 
life/' 

The ingenious author of The Philosophy of Nature 
observes that ^^ vegetables have the consciousness or sen- 
sation of actual and present existence; animals unite to 
this sense the memory of the past; but it belongs to man 
alone to combine these two sentiments with that of the 
future/' This view of the matter is far more poetical 
than philosophical. Our imagination delights in the idea 
that all nature is full of glad or tranquil consciousness of 
pleasurable existence. 

''It is my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes," 

exclaims the benevolent and contemplative Wordsworth; 
and our own Bryant sings, not less melodiously, the same 
strain :— 

"Even the green trees 
Partake the deep contentment as they bend 
To the soft winds; the sun from the blue sky 
Looks in and sheds a blessing- on the scene. 
Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy 
Existence, than the winged plunderer 
That sucks its sweets." 



32 Life. 

"We can know very little of the extension of feeling 
and sentiment through the lower orders of animals, for 
want of communication and intelligible expression ; but 
the doctrine which ascribes to man exclusively the feeling 
of hope or anticipation must be abandoned when we re- 
flect that all domesticated creatures expect their feeding 
time with habitual impatience, and press homeward before 
it arrives; not to dwell upon the promptings of what is 
called instinct; leading to the building of nests, the 
migrations of numerous tribes, the hoarding of food by 
several, and, among bees, the evidently purposed con- 
version of the immature insect of the hive into a great 
and worshipped queen, by a peculiar system of appro- 
priate nutrition. 

By thus regarding the principle of life as expansive, 
and, in the rising series of being, comprehensive of a 
wider and wider extent of capacities or powers, the specu- 
latists have come to confound it, as developed in the 
higher orders of creation, with the reasoning and moral 
faculties; a confusion displayed in the very terms and 
phrases universally employed in the discussion. Thus 
the word psuchey which, as I have said, denoted, among 
the Greeks, the vital principle, the cause of the phe- 
nomena of life, was used also to express the moral and 
aesthetic life — the soul. So, in Rome, the philosophical 
poet Lucretius makes the same indiscriminate use of 
language : — 



Life. 33 

" Spiritus intus alit ; totamque infusa per artus 
Mens ag-itat molem." 

And our English translators of the Bible : " He breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a 
living soul/^ Aristotle, aware of the necessity of nice 
distinctions here, though he does not attempt to institute 
them, asks, ^^ Under which of the categories does the vital 
principle fall to be arranged ? Is it a substance, a 
quality, or a quantity? Are all souls of the same, or are 
there different species ? Men, when they speak of the 
soul, mean the human soul ; but will the same language 
and description apply in all cases ? or would not rather 
every species require a separate and specific definition, as 
the soul of a horse or dog, the soul of a plant, or of a 
wild beast/^ A modern writer. Grew, carrying to an ex- 
treme these notions, suggests that " the several species of 
life seem to be reducible under these three. Vegetable 
life. Sense, and Thought/^ Rush, in his usual anxiety to 
simplify, represents Grrew's and Aristotle^ s several species 
of life ^^as differences of development, or completeness 
only/' " Perfect life,^' he says, ^^ is composed by the union 
of motion, heat, sensation, and thought :" and then goes 
on to affirm that life '^ may exist without thought, sensa- 
tion, or heat; but none of these can exist without motion/' 
Among the modern physiologists who recognize a dis- 
tinct principle of life, Abernethy and Dermot show most 
earnestness in the effort to set apart from each other vital- 
4 



34 Life. 

itj proper, and intelligence; the ^^ psychical principle/^ as 
Todd calls it, from the simply ^^ vital /^ the one found in 
all the animate creation, including vegetable nature— the 
other appertaining to man, and those of the higher orders 
which approach him nearly. ^^If philosophers would 
once admit,'^ says Abernethy, "that life was something 
of an invisible and active nature, superadded to organiza- 
tion, they would then see equal reason to believe that 
mind might be superadded to life, as life is to structure.^' 
Dermot, if I understand him correctly, goes still further, 
and supposes three great orders of animated nature : 1st. 
The vegetable, including also, perhaps, the zoophyte, en- 
dowed with mere life. 2d. A rank of animals above 
these, gifted with intelligence, sentient, and capable of 
thought. 3d, and lastly. Man, in whom a third princi- 
ple is paramount — the true soul, the moral agent, respon- 
sible, capable of right and wrong, of good and evil, of 
vice and virtue. 

During the prevalence of the opinion that life and 
the soul were the same, that the source of animation 
and intelligence was a unit, some well-meaning philoso- 
phers, in their zeal ^^ to vindicate the ways of God to man,'^ 
were fain to take refuge in an hypothesis, proposed by Des 
Cartes, with regard to the phenomena of life in the lower 
animals, namely, ^' that they have no souls at all^ and that 
ail the appearances which they exhibit of sense and vi- 
tality are only deceptions, like the motions of a puppet^ 
the mere effects of mechanism; that, being thus mere au- 



Life. 35 

tomata, they are utterly indifferent to tbe hardships and 
cruelties inflicted on them by our notice and neglect^ and 
by the nature of circumstances which they can neither 
foresee nor control/^ 

The received doctrine of the present day, counting 
among its supporters Lawrence, Mayo, Richerand, and 
Carpenter, is that life is a mere quality, the result of or- 
ganization. Vitality is declared to be ^^ invariably found 
connected with some of the modes or forms of organiza- 
tion ; showing itself when these are first developed, com- 
ing to perfection as they are perfected, modified by their 
various changes, decaying as they decay, and finally ceas- 
ing when they are destroyed/^ Hence it is inferred to be 
nothing more than a series of effects, of which organiza- 
tion is the origin and cause ; a deduction which, on exa- 
mination, will be found erroneous and untenable. Indeed, 
it seems to me far more reasonable to believe, on the con- 
trary, and far more easy to prove, that organization is the 
product, the result of the active condition of a principle 
of vitality, the fom et origo of all the movements which 
constitute outward or visible life. Hence the germination 
of the seed ; hence the marvellous creation of the bird 
within the egg, which to regard as a merely chemical 
process surpasses our most vivid efforts of fancy ; hence 
the pullulation of a bud, or cutting or shoot of a plant, 
its thrusting forth roots and tendrils, its obvious search 
for support, for light, and for water. Hence the healing 
of wounds ; the restoration of lost parts, as of the claws 



S6 Life. 

of the lobster and crab^ and of the whole head of the 
snail decapitated : and hence the annual renewal of the 
horns of the stag. In the polypus^ however mutilated 
and severed into fragments, this actively creative princi- 
ple remodels each part, provides what is wanting, and so 
completes in each anew the deranged and mangled organi- 
zation. 

These wonderful phenomena exhibit, in their impres- 
sive analogy, a recondite cause common to all, and ulti- 
mately the same ; active alike in all living creatures, from 
the mammoth down to the minutest animalcule — from 
man, the very image of his Maker, to the worms that build 
the coral reef, the medusa that sparkles on the midnight 
surface of the glowing ocean, and the scarcely visible 
lichen that covers with its velvet growth the time-worn 
masses of rugged rock. The principle of vitality is in 
all identical, through both the animal and vegetable king- 
doms ; but the manifestations of its presence must be in- 
finitely varied and modified, according to the materials 
upon which and through which it acts. It feels in the 
sentient extremity of the nerve ; it contracts in the mus- 
cles, and flows in the blood; it beams forth in the sweet- 
est smiles of health, cheerfulness, and beauty ; it appals 
us in the distortions of deformity, disease, and despair. 

How difficult it is to understand or grasp the notion 
that the vitality of every living atom — whether fluid, as 
in the sap of vegetables and the blood of animals ; semi- 
fluid and gelatinous, as in the polypus and many infu- 



Life. 37 

soria; and solid, as in wood, bone, and membrane — is the 
mere consequence of its composition, arrangement, and 
relative position in tlie structure of which it forms a 
part ! If the separate atoms or particles are not living, 
it is not easy to conceive how their allocation can give 
them this new property. If they derive it from their re- 
lative position, how can we explain their loss of it, when 
no change has been effected in this regard ; as when death 
follows instantaneously the application of a drop of prus- 
sic acid to the eye or tongue, or a blow upon the pit of 
the stomach? Here, to use the phrase of John Hunter, 
" the dead body has all the composition it ever had.'^ 
The organization is, to all appearances, as perfect as ever ; 
the cause of life has not been taken away : but the effect 
of that cause has ceased — life has departed, never to re- 
turn. Carpenter pronounces, dogmatically, that Hunter is 
wrong, and that in all such examples the minutest struc- 
ture or intricate condition of the organism must have un- 
dergone a change to occasion its death. He reasons in a 
circle, however, and makes no logical effort to sustain the 
burden of proof which fairly lies upon him. He is bound 
to show that some change, some essential alteration of the 
organization to which he attributes life as a consequence, 
has been impressed by the cause of death ; the mere as- 
sumption cannot be admitted. De non existentihus et 
71071 apparentibus^ eadem est ratio. 

An ingenious memoir, by Carpenter, On the Mutual 
Relations of the Vital and Physical Forces, is published 

4>K 



38 Life. 

in the Phil. Trans. 1850. While urging that "it is 
very important that physiological science should be con- 
sidered under the dynamicy rather than the material as- 
pect, as the physical sciences are now viewed by the most 
enlightened philosophers/^ he admits the pre-existence of 
a living organism to be absolutely necessary to the " con- 
version" of heat or any other physical force into a vital 
force. "It is/^ he says, however, "the speciality of the 
material siihstratum, thus furnishing the medium or in- 
strument of the metamorphosis, which establishes, and 
must ever maintain, a well-marked boundary line between 
the vital and physical forces. Starting with the abstract 
notion of Force, as emanating from the Divine Will, we 
might say that this force, operating through inorganic 
matter, manifests itself in electricity, magnetism, light, 
heat, chemical affinity, and mechanical motion : but that, 
when directed through organized structures, it effects the 
operations of growth, chemico-vital transformation, and 
the like ; and is further metamorphosed, through the in- 
strumentality of the structures thus generated, into nerv- 
ous agency and muscular power." 

It is thus asserted that Force, primary, simple, homoge- 
neous, as an abstract idea, derives all its apparent varieties 
of form and character from the varied specialities of the 
material substrata through which it is manifested. "Light 
and heat, acting upon the organic germ (a simple cell), 
hecome transformed into vital force ; as heat, acting upon 
a certain combination of metals, becomes electricity; or elec- 



Life. 39 

tricity, acting upon iron^ develops itself as magnetism/' 
The pre-existence of the organic germ being thus assumed, 
we must inquire into its actual condition before it is 
"acted upon by light and heat/' Is it vitalized or not? 
If not — then whence its potentiality of growth, &c. &c. ? 
If it be vital, then there is a vital principle, force, or 
property — Vitality — independent of, as it is antecedent 
to, the ^^transformation'' of light and heat. 

Dr. Fowler, dwelling on " the qualities by which vital- 
ity has correlations with all other forces," says truly : 
" There still remains a difference. Vitality alone is the 
artist of its own coils (material substrata). No other 
force can make an organ of either animal or plant ; the 
coil by which the vitality is evinced." 

Let us consider the instances in which organization ex- 
ists, without the manifestation of any of the phenomena 
of life, and still more clearly without the independent ca- 
pacity of living, of growth, or development, or self-main- 
tenance alleged to be the result or uniform coincident of 
organization. The ovum expelled from the ovarium of 
the higher order of females is already organized ; the egg 
of the virgin pullet is a perfect egg, as far as can be known; 
in composition, and physical qualities, and beautiful ar- 
rangement, offering no perceptible defect. But each of 
these is incapable of living, unless it has received within 
it, or been closely approached by, the spermatozoon of the 
male, of which we do not know whether it enjoys a sepa- 
rate life as an animalcule or not ; or whether it enters the 



40 LiPE. 

rainute germ^ or merely comes in contact with^ or very 
near to its external surface. Without the presence of 
this spermatozoon, the egg cannot live ; by it the germ is 
vivified. It is clear, therefore, that it must contain and 
convey something of the highest necessity ; it gives vital- 
ity ; it communicates the power of living — the cause, the 
principle of life. It has not, any more than the germ, an 
independent life or power of living ; it is a mere con- 
ductor ; an organized body itself, it does no more than 
transmit a derived and transitive life to an organized body 
which, without the principle thus transmitted, must decay 
and suffer decomposition. Thus the spawn of the female 
fish or frog, deposited on the shallow sand, are vivified by 
the semen of the male ejected upon them, but perish if 
they do not receive vitality by its mere contact. 

Donne tells us that the globules of milk injected into, and 
mingling with the blood, are vivified by such admixture. 
No one considers the globules of milk as living, merely 
because they are organized cells. They become parts of 
a living fluid, by deriving life from the blood, highly 
charged as it is with this principle. So chyme, the pro- 
duct of digestion, composed of recently organized matter, 
becomes again organized during its separation from the 
effete substances with which it was combined, and its pass- 
age into and along the thoracic duct, where it mixes in- 
timately and slowly with the lymph returning to the heart 
and with the blood, itself soon becoming living blood. 
But when and where, and how does the dead and disin- 



Life. 41 

tegrated food thus become organized and alive ? We an- 
swer, as soon as it arrives within the vessels^ and is inter- 
mingled with the lymph and blood ; the first of these 
fluids is especially highly vitalized^ and imparts a portion 
of its life to the chyme, which this derived vitality hastens 
to organize and convert into blood. 

I will take one step farther at this point into the do- 
mains of hypothesis, and venture to suggest that we thus 
obtain a glimpse, at least, of a universal law of vitality 
or vitalization. 

The question of spontaneous, or as it is termed equivo- 
cal, generation, so long and so hotly disputed, is not like- 
ly to reach a final decision through either of the prevail- 
ing methods of treating the subject. While one party, 
inscribing on its banners the axiom omne ah ovo, as- 
sume everywhere the presence of a germ of some kind 
as the necessary precedent of the manifestations of life 
in every form, and the necessary cause of a precisely iden- 
tical form of life, others, with the author of the Vestiges 
of Creation, have maintained the possible production of 
living beings by the ordinary agencies of molecular or 
chemical affinity. May they not both be wrong? 

'' La vie,^^ says Cuvier, '' ne nait que de la vie.^^ Life, 
I also believe, can be born only of life ; but not necessari- 
ly does it originate, as I contend, through the medium of 
a seed or an egg, or germ of any kind. It is a principle 
always derivative ; originally an endowment directly from 
the great source of Being — never, as I agree with Virey, 



42 Life. 

the property of the individual. I go a step beyond this, 
and regard it as never the property even of the species. 
Like heat and electricity, it is inextinguishable and in- 
destructible ; it is latent sometimes ; it is ever ready to 
be transmitted. I see no reason for limiting its trans- 
mission through identical or even similar forms. 

The decay of organized bodies seems, as one of its uni- 
form results, to effect or offer the separation and elimina- 
tion of organized corpuscles. The vitality which has 
been diffused through the whole mass, and does not desert 
it at once or simultaneously in all its parts, may in tran- 
situ ^x in some of the myriads of disintegrated particles, 
effecting the diversified organization which we see, and 
producing the infinite variety of infusory animalculse and 
vegetable minims, algse or tremellse, the absolute nature 
of which, as I have already said, is undetermined. Nay, 
it is perhaps in itself indeterminate, for the primary 
globule or minute cell seems, whether vegetable or animal, 
to be identical in structure and composition, as far as 
these are or can be known. 

It is curious to note how little the blood-globule itself 
of the highest order of animals, man, differs from the 
single primary cell of the lowest alga or fungus. The 
former, say Matteucci and Pereira, consists — setting aside 
the coloring matter, which is not essential — 1st, ^^of a 
capsule shell or involucrum, composed of an albuminous 
substance, sometimes called globulin ; and 2d, of a nu- 
cleus." (M. P. 135, note.) 



Life. 43 

The original cell, ^^ the universal elementary organ of 
vegetables/' as Schleiden calls it, is a very minute vesi- 
cle, oval or globular, containing a nucleus, to which he 
gives the name of Cytoblast. So also, according to 
Wagner, " the Graafian vesicle— the elementary basis of 
the ovum in animals — appears to be an elementary cell/' 
" It may be asserted,'' says the profound Schwann, ^^ that 
there is one universal principle of development for the 
elementary parts of organisms, and that this principle is 
the formation of cells." 

We have no right to assume that these cells are all of 
them originally living, though organized. All analogy 
leads us rather to conclude that they derive from without 
the life manifested by their growth and development. 
Even the ovum is shown to be thus dependent, and to 
receive a communicated vitality ; the same is true of the 
dead matter, eaten, dissolved, absorbed, mingled with 
living lymph in the thoracic duct, and perfectly vitalized 
with the venous blood in the lungs. In both these ex- 
amples, the form of life is modified by the original source, 
as we see most strikingly in hybrids, and in the nature of 
ther characteristic secretions and structure of animals fed 
on the same nutriment, but differing widely in every re- 
spect. So with regard to all elementary cells whatever, 
I cannot imagine either that they should possess an ori- 
ginal independent life, or that they should be absolutely 
unimpressible or capable of refusing to be modified more 
or less by the contingencies under which, and the sources 



44 Life. 

from which, they obtain the derived life which is to sus- 
tain and develop them. "We can be in no danger of fall- 
ing into the erroneous train of thought, pursued origin- 
ally by Lamarck, and subsequently by the author of the 
work on Creation ^ already alluded to. The derived life, 
originating in the processes of decay and decomposition, is 
always inferior, base, and fragmentary; worthy of its 
source in the compost heap and charnel-house ; sinking 
and retrograding, as it would seem, of necessity ; never 
tending upwards, or self-elevating. 

In this labyrinth, our inquiries cannot fail to lead us 
into the admission of an immense diversity in the several 
modes of specific life impressed upon germs of every kind 
by the vivifying pollen, milt, or seminal fluid. Examine 
the egg of the bird, and say. How shall bone, and mem- 
brane, and flesh, and plumage emerge from this soft mass 
of albumen? whence shall flow the blood destined to cir- 
culate in the vessels ? how shall be built up the nervous 
arrangement which shall connect these numerous and dis- 
similar parts ? how shall the form, the color, be deter- 
mined ? What energy shall be exerted, what influence 
applied, to produce all these results ? What relevaiicy 
can be imagined between the apparent qualities of the 
agent, to which we ascribe them all, and the prodigious 
effects of the agency exercised ? Nothing is left to chance. 
Given the parents, the child can be prefigured. The plastic 
germ receives the vital impression, and takes the form 
foreknown. 



Life. 45 

Surely we must conclude, then, not that life is the con- 
sequence of organization, but that the special organization 
adopted is altogether the creation of the principle of vi- 
tality, without whose action it could not exist, nor grow, 
nor find development, and which originates and impresses 
all its capacities, as well as its mode of growth, increase, 
maturity, duration, and ultimate decay, decline, and ex- 
tinction. 



Blttp, 



SLEEP, 



ALTERNATION of action and repose is a universal 
law of animated nature. We may indeed consider 
it an absolute necessity of hemg itself, as would appear 
from the infinitely numerous exhibitions of periodicity 
and intermission observable in all the movements; whether 
of worlds or atoms, around us ; in oscillations, vibrations, 
rhythmical forms produced by the agitation of musical 
sounds ; fits of refraction and reflection, as Newton termed 
them, in rays of light ; polarization, undulation, and crys- 
tallization. It is, however, most strongly marked in the 
movements of life, none of which are constant or continu- 
ous. 

Life implies the capacity to be acted upon from with- 
out; a susceptibility to external impulses, which exhibits 
itself in manifold modes. None of the actions thus 

5^ 



50 Sleep. 

aroused can be continuous ; for they all depend upon 
causes which either cease their impression from time to 
time^ being themselves occasionally suspended or removed, 
or they exhaust the susceptibility which they are adapted 
to impress. 

In the higher orders of animated being, and in these 
only; we have an apparatus of organs which brings us 
into conscious relation with nature external to us. In 
the lower classes of animals, where we lose the traces of 
such organization, we doubt the existence of sensitiveness 
or the consciousness of sensuous impressions. Still more 
do we doubt the existence of the organs or the faculty in 
the vegetable tribes. 

Sleep is the repose of this apparatus, in all its extent ; 
it is the rest of the sensorial system ; of the sensibility 
or sensitive faculty; of the mind; of the psychical prin- 
ciple. It consists, emphatically, in the suspension, more 
or less perfect, of sensation, perception, voluntary motion, 
and volition, thought, and mental emotion. Where there 
are no sensations, no ideas, no emotions, no volitions, 
there can be no sleep. 

How far down in the scale of being we shall allow the 
presence of a mind, a psychical principle, a soul, in the 
meaning of Aristotle, has not been determined ; but we 
must stop somewhere. It may be difficult to draw the 
line among animals, but one would suppose it must, of 
necessity, exclude vegetables. Botanists and physiologists, 
nevertheless, describe very prettily, and in minute detail. 



Sleep. 51 

the Sleep, as Darwin has recited most poetically, ^^ The 
Loves, of the Plants/' 

" The sleep of plants/' says Burdach, '^ manifests itself 
generally by an inversion of the plastic (or formative) 
activity. The stalks and the leaves have for their special 
function the imbibition of carbon, and the exhalation of 
oxygen, but they effect this only during the day. In the 
night, on the contrary, they absorb oxygen, and give out 
carbon, as the roots do always. Thus during the night, 
the antagonism of the stem and the root (their contrast 
of function) is suppressed ; the radicular life becoming 
predominant. Eesins, oils, and alkaloids are the pro- 
duct of the light of day ; acids are the products of night. 
The bryophyllum calycinum, acid in the morning, insipid 
at mid-day, is bitter in the evening. The stalk of the 
nymphaea alba bends itself at evening into the water, and 
raises itself in the morning. The sensitive plant opens 
its leaves as wide as possible at mid-day, towards dusk the 
folioles shut up, then the petioles lower themselves ; the 
movement thus progressing from above downwards, at 
first rapidly with short intervals, then becoming calmer 
and more uniform, until at last the contraction is most 
complete at midnight.'' 

But these interesting periodical movements and changes, 
so well described by our author, are not sleep, or repose, 
or suspension of action ; nor do they seem to me to pre- 
sent any feature closely resembling it. Their relation to 
the alternations of day and night depends on contingencies 



52 Sleep. 

not well understood : for we find examples in vegetable 
nature of expansion of leaves and even of flowering, tlie 
highest activity of condition of a plant^ at every hour of 
the twenty-four. The oestrum nocturne^ the geranium 
triste^ and the cactus grandifloruS; bloom only after night- 
fall. Besides this, it is fully demonstrated that what is 
thus fancifully called the sleep of plants is not in any 
manner a collapse or yielding condition ; the stems and 
leaves close and bend, but are not passive or flaccid. It 
requires force to alter the direction they spontaneously 
assume; and they resume it again as soon as left to them- 
selves. 

^' In general characters/^ says Mtiller, " the sleep of 
animals and that of plants resemble each other. There 
are, however^ points of great dissimilarity. The position 
which the leaves assume during the sleep of plants is the 
same which they have when young, and are yet not un- 
folded. But this position in sleep is not the result of re- 
laxation, for it does not admit of being easily changed ; 
so that the leaves break ofi" in the attempt. Moreover^ 
in the sensitive plants^ the position which the leaves have 
during sleep is the same that they take when irritated.^' 

How improperly the phrase ^' Sleep of plants'^ is em- 
ployed, the same high authority goes on to show most 
strongly while continuing himself to use it, and faintly to 
defend the analogy inferred in its employment. ^^The 
sleep of animals is a phenomenon dependent on a 
change in the animal part of the organism alone. All 



Sleep. 53 

the functions of organic life, namely, the processes minis- 
tering to nutrition, with all the involuntary movements 
attending them, pursue their ordinary course. Even the 
involuntary movements of the animal system of muscles, 
such as those of respiration, and many other movements 
of the same kind, do not partake of the repose of sleep. 
The organic system,'^ he goes on to remark, ^^has its 
periods of remission and rest ; but these are not coinci- 
dent with the sleep of animal life, and are very different 
for different organs. The heart has its period of rest 
after each beat; the intestines, &c., have theirs also at 
different times; and the change and new formation of 
the hairs and feathers show us that the nutritive pro- 
cesses also have alternate periods of rest and action. 
Even the growth of a single tooth, spine, or feather, pre- 
sents to us a cycle of states in which the formative pro- 
cess has different degrees of activity. These must con- 
sist of a regular series of alternate remission and exalta- 
tion.'' 

After all this, one is surprised to find Mtiller asserting, 
in distinct terms, that " the daily sleep of plants, and 
their winter sleep, present phenomena in some important 
respects exactly similar to the sleep and hybernation of 
animals. They prove that neither the internal tendency 
to periodical phenomena, nor the dependence on external 
stimuli, is peculiar to organic beings supplied with 
nerves and a central source of action.'' 

No one can be better aware than the illustrious phy- 



54 Sleep. 

siologist, whose language I thus venture to comment upon 
and censure, that the questions thus mingled and run to- 
gether by him are, in themselves, absolutely separate, and 
entirely unconnected. It is very possible, nay, probable, 
that the hybernation of the vegetable world is closely ana- 
logous or altogether identical with the wintry retirement 
of hybernating animals ; in both, it is a condition very 
different from the state of sleep. It is certain that pe- 
riodicity is a general law which governs alike both these 
kingdoms of nature; but from his own data, recited 
above, we are obliged to conclude that the periodical 
repose of sleep is only necessary and possible to an 
animal, nay, that it is only predicable of an animal ^^ sup- 
plied with nerves and a central source of action. ^^ Of 
hybernation it is foreign to my present purpose to treat ; 
the periodical alternations of action of the vegetable 
tribes I have already described from Burdach, whom I 
shall again quote, as affording us a large number of facts 
highly interesting in this connection. ^^This so-called 
sleep,^^ he tells us, ^^is not an effect mechanically result- 
ing from temperature or from humidity, nor is darkness 
an efficient cause. Du Hamel, Marrian, and Ritter have 
seen plants, kept in perpetual obscurity, open and close 
as regularly as when exposed to the open air and the 
influence of day and night.^^ 

Decandolle saw some sensitive plants kept in a place 
continually dark, a mirablle jalapa shut up in a cellar 
lighted equally by a lamp, and some oxalis submitted 



Sleep. 55 

to the same treatment during the night only, open by 
day and close at night. The same botanist exposed 
the belle de nuit to artificial light during the night, 
and kept it in darkness during the day. After the 
second day of this treatment, it left off its habit of 
spreading its leaves in the evening, and shutting them in 
the morning; opened in the morning, and closed at night. 
He obtained the same result in the convolvulus purpurea 
and some sensitive plants. We are not informed of the 
corresponding chemical phenomena in these experiments; 
nor can I find any record showing whether the night- 
blooming differ from day-blooming plants in their chemi- 
cal agencies at different periods of the twenty-four hours. 

There seems to be some irregularity in the above state- 
ments, which exhibit to us an occasional independence 
of plants upon the influence of light, and an occasional 
modification of habits fairly ascribable only to that influ- 
ence. 

In ascending the scale of animal life, where shall we 
first meet with the phenomena of true sleep ? Not, I 
answer, until we become aware of the presence and influ- 
ence of a ^^ nervous system, and of a central source of 
- action. ^^ It is important that we should define clearly 
what we intend in this relation by ^^ a nervous system 
and a nervous centre ;^^ and we shall find the subject best 
treated of by Dr. Todd in his well-known paper in the 
Cydcypsedia of Anatomy and Physiology ^ from which I 
shall here draw freely: ^^ The existence of this remarka- 



56 Sleep. 

ble and peculiar kind of matter^ which we call nervous 
matter^ is limited to the animal kingdom^ and is therefore 
one of the characteristic features of animals as distin- 
guished from plants. It is obviously the presence of a^s?/- 
chical agent, controlling and directing certain bodily acts 
of animals; which has called into existence the particular 
apparatus now referred to. In the lowest creatures, the 
existence of nervous matter in any form is as yet pro- 
blematical. Some physiologists suppose that it exists 
diffused in the molecular form throughout the body of 
the animal; and the muscular tissue being likewise dis- 
posed in a similar way, the one may act upon the other 
at every point. The form in which it first develops 
itself as a distinct tissue is in that of threads or cords. 
The nervous matter presents the singular peculiarity that 
it alone, of all the varied forms of animal texture, is 
directly influenced by the mental acts of animals. It is 
that part of the organism through the immediate agency 
of which mind operates upon body and body upon mind. 
Through this connection with the psychical principle of the 
animal, sensation is produced, and volition is enabled to 
exercise its influence on muscular organs. In the largest 
proportion of the animal kingdom, the nervous matter is 
so disposed or arranged as to form a system complete in 
itself, and distinct from, although connected with, the 
other textures and organs. The same matter is accumu- 
lated into masses forming what are denominated Centres 
of nervous actions ; and it is also developed in the form 



Sleep. 57 

of fibres, filaments, or minute threads, which, when bound 
together, constitute the nerves. These are internuncial 
in their office, conducting the impulses of the centres to 
the periphery, and carrying the impressions made upon 
the peripheral ramifications to the centres. Nor are they 
mere passive instruments in the performance of their 
functions; but produce their proper efi'ect through the 
susceptibility to undergo molecular changes under the 
influence of appropriate stimuli/^ ^^ The centres,^^ he 
goes on to say, ^^are the great sources of nervous power; 
they are the laboratories in which the nervous force is 
generated. The mind appears to be more immediately 
connected with one of them, which, pre-eminent on that 
account, exerts a certain control or influence over its 
fellows.^^ 

Matteucci dissents from the great English physiologist 
in suggesting an entirely different source for the nervous 
power. ^^ This fluid,^^ for so he considers it, he main- 
tains to be ^^ produced by the chemical actions of nutri- 
tion; it is developed principally in the muscles, enters 
continually into the nerves, and from them passes into 
the brain, assuming in these bodies a new state, which is 
no longer that of the free fluid : this state is that of the 
nervous current, whicli proceeds from the nervous ex- 
tremities to the brain, and returns in the contrary direc- 
tion by the act of the will/^ There are many circum- 
stances which go to confirm the truth of this opinion of 
Matteucci ; while it seems unreasonable, on the other hand, 
6 



58 Sleep. 

to deny the generating power of the cerebral matter. I 
infer that the ^^ nervous fluid/^ if it be a fluid, is produced 
elsewhere as well as in the brain, because it is created 
and accumulated during sleep, at which time the brain is 
at least comparatively inactive, while the organic func- 
tions, especially that of nutrition, go on unimpeded with 
all their chemical changes. Fatigue exhausts the nerv- 
ous power more than even thought, and brings on a still 
more urgent necessity for the recruiting and restorative 
influence of sleep. Cold, when long continued and 
intense, brings on profound sleep, partly perhaps by the 
determination of blood to the internal vessels from the 
surface, but doubtless also in part by arresting the func- 
tional changes, the chemical results of organic action, 
of which the generation of nervous power is a prominent 
element. 

In man, we have the highest and most complicated 
animal type, the most complex and delicate nervous 
organization. In him there are — I pretermit minute ana- 
tomical discussions — three nervous centres : the brain, the 
spinal marrow, and the great sympathetic or ganglionic. 
With this last we have at present little to do. If a re- 
ceiving and influential centre, as is supposed, it is very 
doubtful whether it is impressed with either sensation or 
emotion independently of its connection with the spinal 
cord and brain. I can conceive of an animal thus, exclu- 
sively supplied with ganglionic nervous matter and a 
sympathetic nervous centre, which would be incapable of 



Sleep. 59 

going to sleep, because it could never be properly said to 
be awake. The organic life of an animal^ over which 
this system presides, has as little to do with sleep, or the 
disposition to it, or the necessity for it, as the life of a 
vegetable. 

Where we first ascertain the '^ connection of nervous 
matter with a psychical principle in the animal/^ there is 
the lower boundary of the wide and gentle domain of 
" nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep/^ There mind is 
active, and must repose ] being exhausted by action in all 
its modes, whether this action be sensation, emotion, or 
volition. G-arner places this boundary very far down in 
the scale of being, even including some of the mollusca ; 
so that science is fully prepared to sanction our dramatist's 
melancholy suspicion that even '- an oyster may be crossed 
in love.^' In this regard, bulk or size is of no sort of 
consequence. Many tribes, invisible to us except by the 
appliances of optical art, are highly endowed ; while many 
large masses are comparatively dull, inactive, insensitive 
— without perception, memory, or will. No one, I imagine, 
has ever watched, for an hour, the movements and actions 
of the infusoria as displayed by the hydro-oxygen micro- 
scope, without being satisfied of the reign of sensation and 
emotion throughout these tiny nations, nay, of the strong 
mental animation which agitates them. '' They rage and 
strive, desire and love ;'^ they must therefore sleep. 

Sleep manifests itself by the suspension of the func- 
tions of animal or relative life. ^^ On the commencement 



GO Sleep. 

of sleep/^ says Miiller, ^^ the senses cease to receive ex- 
ternal impressions^ and the play of ideaS; and the emo- 
tions are in a greater or less degree silenced. The will 
ceases to rule the muscles^ and a state of inaction extends 
over the whole animal system of organs. ^^ '' During 
sleep/^ says Burdach^ ^Hhe soul isolates itself, and with- 
draws from the periphery of its domains to the centre. ^^ 
All inlets of sensation are now barred up. In animals 
that see the light, the eyes droop their lids, or, if kept 
open, ^^ their sense is shut,^^ as in Lady Macbeth. The 
ears hear no sound, or a dull rumbling is all that they 
perceive. The olfactory and gustatory nerves are not 
readily affected by odors or flavors; and the touch re- 
sponds to harsh, or pungent, or vehement impressions 
only. 

I have said that sleep is the repose of the mind. If 
the brain were perfectly separated from the spinal cord 
and the great sympathetic, the demand for sleep would be 
absolutely and exclusively psychical, and we would only 
sleep when exhausted with seeing, hearing, feeling, tast- 
ing, smelling ; or with some mental emotion ; or some in- 
tellectual effort. But now, and simply because of this 
indissoluble connection so close and intricate uniting these 
three centres, we must sleep when satiated with food, and 
when fatigued with muscular exertion. 

As we refer unhesitatingly ail mental processes to the 
brain, which is, by universal consent, regarded as the seat 
of thought and sensation, so we believe that certain 



Sleep. 61 

changes in the condition of tlie brain, are essentially co- 
incident with, and physically and efficiently causative of 
sleep. These changes it will not be easy to indicate 
with precision. The ancients believed in a cerebral col- 
lapse, in which notion they are followed, among other 
moderns, by Cullen and Richerand. 

Haller suggests a deficiency of animal spirits (or nerv- 
ous fluid ?) as the proximate cause of sleep ; Blumenbach, 
a diminished afflux of blood to the brain ; and Brown and 
Darwin, the exhaustion of irritability. Broussais takes 
a somewhat contrasted view of the matter, regarding the 
brain as in a state of engorgement, and offering more than 
one fact from which, to use his own phrase, he '' would 
conclude that sleep is a most active function of the brain /' 
yet he goes on to define it, with seeming inconsistency, as 
a " diminution of all the principal and most apparent phe- 
nomena that constitute the state of life.'' More recent 
writers on physiology have been reluctant to offer theories 
or hypotheses on this obscure subject. 

Carpenter, in an essay on sleep, written with his usual 
ability, and published in the 35th No. of the Cyclopedia of 
Anatomy and Physiology y defines it as ^^ the state of 
suspension of the sensory and motor functions.'^ ^^ It 
consists,^' he says, ^^ essentially in suspended activity of the 
sensorium, so that impressions made on the organs of 
sense are neither felt nor perceived. '^ He devotes a para- 
graph to the consideration of the '^ sleep of plants,^' and 
speaks of '^ the sleep of leaves,^' while admitting that 

6* 



62 Sleep. 

" plants can present no phenomena really analogous to 
those in which we have defined the sleep of animals to 
consist/' 

In examining closely the circumstances presented dur- 
ing the state of sleep, we shall discover, I think, that the 
concurrence of two obvious elements is necessary to its 
production. Any living fibre, when subjected to inspec- 
tion, nay, any living globule of any living fluid, presents 
when in action the condition of vital tension as the most 
evident proof of its activity ; an erethism, a constitutional 
or compositional excitement, greater or less in proportion 
to the degree of its vitality and the energy of its action. 
But the tension of the tissues, of which the globules of 
living fluids are destined to form parts by deposition and 
fixation, cannot be always sustained at an equable rate, 
but must undergo alternately at proper periods a 
comparative relaxation. Throughout the waking hours, 
various portions of the nervous centres are in varying 
states of tension and erethism, and a certain degree of 
relief is obtained from time to time by each, through the 
removal or change of impression and action from one por- 
tion to another. After a while, however, they all grow 
weary, and, as the old writers correctly imagined, undergo 
a collapse, by the subsidence of the tension or erethism 
of which I have spoken. But the cerebral organ is con- 
tained in an unyielding case of bone, and cannot thus 
shrink, unless the space to be made vacant by its shrink- 
ing be filled up in some mode. Plence arises the in- 



Sleep. 63 

termixture of the second element whose concurrence I con- 
template as necessary, the determination of blood, name- 
ly, to the cerebral mass, and its congestion in the larger 
vessels of the brain, chiefly as I suppose the veins and 
sinuses, whose structure and arrangement are somewhat 
peculiar, and well adapted to receive and sustain this con- 
gestion. It is true that, between the immediately invest- 
ing membranes of the brain, and its unyielding bony case, 
there is interposed for purposes of support and defence the 
cerebro-spinal fluid, which varies in amount according to 
a thousand varying contingencies of the animal economy. 
But the rapid, nay, the instantaneous transitions from the 
sleeping to the waking state, do not admit of any satis- 
factory reference to such changes in quantity, which must 
require notable and comparatively prolonged intervals of 
time, occupied by secretion and absorption. 

The fact of cerebral collapse during sleep is established 
by observation in cases where, the bone being deficient, 
the organ was liable to external pressure. Blumenbach 
states that he himself witnessed in one person a sinking 
of the brain whenever he was asleep, and a swelling when 
he awoke. Dendy relates the story of a woman who, at 
Montpellier, in 1841, had lost part of the skull, the brain 
and its membranes being laid bare. When she was in 
deep sleep, the brain lay in the skull almost motionless; 
when she was dreaming, it became elevated ; and when 
her dreams were on vivid or animating subjects, as proved 
by her afterwards relating them, but more especially when 



64 Sleep. 

she was awake^ tlie brain was protruded through the cra- 
nial aperture. In another case^ Combe observed, through 
an opening in the skull, that the brain was elevated dur- 
ing an apparent dream. 

This theory or hypothesis of the physical causation of 
natural sleep applies well to the explanation of some of 
the enforced or artificial sleeps. Suppose either of these 
two elements producible at will, and it tends to generate 
the other; the undue predominance of either constitut- 
ing the special character of the sleep. Thus, if you di- 
minish the cerebral tension, no matter how, by a long 
story, a dull sermon, or (e. g.) a tedious essay ; or by 
fatigue, which exhausts the nervous power generally; or 
by wasting disease (^^ I must sleep now,^^ exclaimed the 
dying Byron) ; or by inanition, or large drafts from the 
fluids of the body in any mode — congestion takes place in 
the cerebral veins and sinuses, the eye reddens and is suf- 
fused, the sight grows dim, the face, except in the blood- 
less, flushes somewhat, the lids droop, the muscles relax, 
and slumber invades us. 

If, on the other hand, you promote in any way the en- 
trance of blood into the vessels of the head, while you 
avoid any excitement which may arouse the mind, and 
thus oppose a cerebral tension to the dilatation of the 
vessels within the cranium, you will bring on sleep. Thus 
act rocking in a cradle ; the oscillations of a hammock ; 
the gyrations of a circular swing ; almost infallibly the 
motion -communicated by a body moving round upon its 



Sleep. 65 

own centre, as wlicn lying with Lead to the circumference, 
and feet to the centre of a phitfonn, revolving like a mill- 
stone. Mesmeric sleep has been thns accounted for. A 
position or attitude of muscular relaxation is arranged ; 
all mental action repressed — all sensation, and every im- 
pression, interrupted or veiled ; a quiet attention directed 
to the conjuror, who makes no sound, and avoids all rude 
movement ; under these circumstances, the cerebral ere- 
thism of thought, motion, and emotion gradually subsides, 
while the vascular determination is in a gentle way aided 
by the fixation of the eye, on which so much stress is 
laid by Baird, of Newcastle, and Ratcliffe Hall. As to 
the effect of ether, chloroform, and other anaesthetics, 
from which exulting humanity has already derived so 
much benefit, and indulges so much larger and hopeful 
anticipations, it presents a very complicated and difficult 
problem. Perhaps it is, in part, owing to the quick absorp- 
tion of the exhaled fluids by the blood in the lungs, which 
is transmitted to the delicate and yielding texture of the 
cerebral fibres, impregnated with their highly elastic va- 
por, adapted to exert within the vessels a powerful, 
though very transient intravascular pressure. They are 
all, I believe, of this rapidly vaporizable and elastic 
character, undergoing great expansion by moderate in- 
crease of temperature. 

Certain pathological facts are consistent with, if they 
are not rather confirmatory of, this view of the condition 
of the brain in sleep. If Solly be right, and there is no 



66 Sleep. 

positive reason to pronounce him otherwise^ delirium 
trem ens, of all maladies known to us the one in which 
sleeplessness is most specially the prominent element, pre- 
sents a remarkably anemic state of the brain ; the de- 
ficiency of blood in the organ totally prohibiting the vas- 
cular congestion which I maintain to be a necessary 
requisite in sleep ; there being, at the same time, a most 
extraordinary intensity of erethism or cerebral irritation. 
Chloroform, by subduing the latter, removes the former 
evil, and has been found among the most certain and 
prompt remedies for this wretched eifect of intemperance. 

Marshall Hall contends that convulsion cannot happen 
until congestion in the head has been produced by the 
spastic contraction of the muscles of the neck^ the pla- 
tysma myoides particularly, which prevents the return of 
blood downwards through the large veins. Now sleep, 
or a condition strongly resembling it, either immediately 
precedes, or attends simultaneously, or follows an attack 
of convulsions. M. Hall advises that the epileptic be not 
suffered, for this reason, to sleep soundly. We infer that 
a patient sleeps through a convulsive paroxysm too, 
because he is happily insensible at the time or retains no 
memory of consciousness ; and all are familiar with the 
profound slumber which usually terminates these dreaded 
invasions, of whatever character, hysteric or epileptic. 

It is affirmed that sleep has been frequently brought 
on, in persons trephined, by pressure upon the encepha- 
lon at the part exposed. 



Sleep. 67 

The pathological relations of sleep deserve a more care- 
ful consideration than they have hitherto received from 
physicians. We may perceive its relevancy, in the mode 
ahove stated, to some of the cerebral affections. It not 
unfrequently passes into aj)0]^lexy in subjects predisposed, 
the intravascular pressure transcending the normal point, 
or the vessels yielding to it at some weak part, and 
allowing effusion of blood or serum, or undergoing actual 
rupture. In epilepsi/, the moment of danger is, in some, 
at the coming on of the sleep; in others, just when the 
patient is about to wake. Incubus^ or night-mare, a most 
distressing disorder, comes on during the most profound 
sleep, which it embitters and surrounds with terrors be- 
yond all that imagination can conceive. 

It seems to me to consist in a strange consciousness, 
on the part of the sufferer, of the congestion enhanced to 
stagnation of blood in the encephalon, and the conse- 
quent impediment to the action of the heart. There 
appears a good deal of similarity between this condition 
and the sufferings of the liydrotlioracic patient. These 
are always most urgent during sleep, and in the hori- 
zontal posture, which favors cerebral congestion. The 
dreams, like those of incubus, are significant and suggest- 
ive : the patient, in the one, is oppressed by some intolera- 
ble weight, or kept down by a horrible and supernatural 
force ) in the other, he struggles in the sea to avoid drown- 
ing, or is suffocated or strangled. Asthma almost always 
assails during the first heavy sleep on lying down. 



68 Sleep. 

But there are instances in wliich the predisposition 
evidently developed in sleep is obscure and difficult to 
understand. Thus cholera in all its forms^ sporadic^ 
spasmodic, bilious, and malignant, invades most fre- 
quently in the night, towards morning, after sleep has 
lasted some time. Colic awakes the patient often. 
Diarrlioea and dj/sentery begin when the night's sleep is 
about to end. The relations of sleep to fever are curi- 
ous. In thirty years of inquiry, I have heard of very 
few instances, not more than six in all, of the superven- 
tion of intermittent^ the occurrence of a cJiill, in the state 
of sleep. Malarious remittent seldom or never, I know 
no example, attacks during sleep. On the contrary, 
yellow fever often arouses the startled slumberer. Among 
the phlegmasige, croii'p, laryngitis^ often come upon the 
sleeping subject. 

Sleep, quiet and profound, is, in a very large propor- 
tion of diseases, not only a good symptom, but positively 
and beyond question remedial. It suspends many irrita- 
tive, and some inflammatory affections. Catarrlial an- 
noyances yield, for the time, to its gentle sway; it is the 
only hope of relief in numerous forms of agonizing cepJia- 
lalyia. Neuralgic anguish of every kind is not only sus- 
pended while it continues, but, when regularly recurrent, 
has its tenacious periodicity interrupted most efficiently. 
Indeed, in almost all periodical affections, some advantage 
is sure to be derived from the use of narcotics, so timed 
as to put the patient soundly to sleep at, or a little 



Sleep. 69 

before, the hour of their return. This is remarkably 
notable in the instance of malarious intermittcnts, which 
I have many scores of times put off by a soporific dose of 
opium. Indeed, I think most of the therapeutic benefits 
of opium, ascribed to its diaphoretic property, flow from 
its delightful influence in procuring sleep, a state almost 
incompatible with certain modes of irritation and inflam- 
mation; and this leads me to hope much similar advan- 
tage from the enlarging list of anaesthetics, in all forms 
of disease of which the combination of these elements 
constitutes the prominent feature of the first or invading 
stage. 

The want of sleep, moruid vvjilance, aggravates almost 
all diseases, and may give rise to many. Dr. Brigham, 
than whom there cannot be named higher authority on 
this point, believes it to be paramount among the causes 
of huanity. In/ei--ers, generally, it does great harm by 
the protracted cerebral erethism of which it is both cause 
and consequence. Of its relation to delirium tremens^ I 
have already spoken. 

The moral influences of sleeplessness are worth noting. 
The temper becomes harsh and sour; the man is petulant, 
testy, unreasonable, and liable to great, depression of 
spirits. Ultimately, both mind and body succumb. The 
most savage animals are tamed by this privation; and 
experiments show that horses and men break down more 
under the fatigue of night- work and night-marching than 
under the greatest exposure and hardest labor during the 
7 



70 Sleep. 

hours of sunsliine. Dr. Willshire gives a case of hysteric 
sleeplessness of fourteen days' duration, with only eleven 
hours sleep in all that time; Dr. G. Bird an instance in 
which an hysterical lady was kept awake by mental emo- 
tion for five days; and Dr. J. Johnson one of a gentle- 
man going to the West Indies, who had ^^ no sleep for seve- 
ral weeks. '^ Yet we are told that none of these subjects 
sufi*ered permanent injury. 

Sleep — my most grateful and worthy theme, would that 
my pen or tongue were equal to its celebration ! — has been 
grossly libelled by poets and philosophers, as in some 
measure allied to death. The highest poetical authority 
uses the phrase '' Death's twin brother. Sleep T' Bichat 
affirms that death is but a collection of partial sleeps of 
the various organs and functions. J. M. Good defines 
sleep ^^ as the death or torpitude of the voluntary or- 
gans, while the involuntary continue their accustomed 
actions. Death is the sleep or torpitude of the whole. '^ 

I protest against these views as full of gross error. 
Death and sleep differ toto calo; the former is the begin- 
ning of disintegration — the latter the chief or only means 
of renovation. Death implies destructive change; sleep 
restorative change. Death is the correlative and oppo- 
site of life, organic activity ; sleep is the correlative and 
opposite of sensuousness, psychical activity. The mis- 
take results, in part, from a confusion between inactivity 
and inaction. From the moment when sleep commences, 
the activity or capacity of action begins to be renewed, 



Sleep. 71 

and goes on increasing, but is totally lost wlien the living 
frame has fallen into the torpitude of death. 

The English Henry expresses his grief at haying 
"frighted'^ sleep; but the approach of sleep seems to 
have frighted Sir Thomas More^ who would never trust 
himself with ^' Nature's soft nurse/' on account of the al- 
leged family likeness, without a prayer to heaven for pro- 
tection. I do not mean to blame the good knight; a 
prayer is never misplaced. Montaigne, too, the quaint 
old Gaul, remarks that '' it is not without reason that we 
dwell on the resemblance between death and sleep/' and 
then exclaims, '' How carelessly we pass from waking to 
sleep ! with how little anxiety do we lose the conscious- 
ness of light and of ourselves. The faculty of sleep might 
even seem useless and contrary to nature as depriving us 
of all feeling and action, but that it serves to instruct us 
that we are made to die as well as to live, and to accus- 
tom us to go out of life without fear.'^ The same idea 
seems to have been in the mind of the English poet 
when he exclaimed: — 



' Oh ! what a wonder seems the fear of death- 
Seeing how gladly we all smk to sleep, 
Night follow^ing night." 



The ancient phrase. Mors janiia vitcEj is true in the 
sense of a glorious promise for the future. Sleep is al- 
ways the gate of life, and every waking may be fanciful- 
ly termed a resurrection. Happy if our faith were strong 



72 Sleep. 

enougli to remove all anxiety, as Montaigne suggests, 
in tlie one case as in the other. But the analogy fails. 
Instinct makes for us, unerriDgly, the wide distinction 
which reason and science have failed to draw ; we all de- 
light to sleep, we all fear to die. Doubt and gloom pre- 
vail, and ^we sigh with the poet minstrel, '' Ah ! when 
will day dawn on the night of the grave T' 

Our Divine Teacher dwelt on the contrast strongly, 
when he said of his friend Lazarus, ^^He is not dead, 
but sleepeth;^' and of Jairus' daughter, "The maiden 
is not dead, but sleepeth.^' It is a beautiful expression 
in the Hebrew Lyric, " He giveth his beloved sleep !'^ 
And what greater boon can be offered by the good Father 
to his weary, care-worn, suffering child ? Every sorrow 
is soothed, every pain assuaged, every grief hushed for a 
time, and even the anguish of guilt and of remorse 
awhile suspended. To sleep is, in most diseases, to take 
a step at least towards recovery. It is in our best health 
a necessary preparation for the active duties of life, whe- 
ther physical, moral, or intellectual. The strength is re- 
stored, the temper improved by tranquil slumber, and the 
judgment rendered clearer and more impartial. 

" Oh, sacred rest, 
Sweet pleasing sleep ! of all the powers the best ; 
Oh peace of mind, repairer of decay, 
Whose balms renew the limbs to labors of the day. 
Care shuns thy soft approach, and sullen flies away I" 



1 



Sleep. 73 

The sleep of bealtli and innocence is the most exqui- 
site picture which the sight can dwell upon. The grace- 
ful languor of the soft repose ; the perfect quietude ex- 
pressed in the face and attitude ; the slow, full-measured 
rhythm of the respiration ; the subdued glow upon the 
cheek ; the veiled and veined eye ; the genial warmth of the 
pliant, yet elastic skin — what a contrast do all these offer 
to the rigid and angular position of the limbs in death, 
or the heavy rolling of the trunk to the most depending 
point of support ; the open and glaring orb, transparent 
still, but sightless and fixed ; the pinched or distended 
nostril; the jaw fallen; the lips livid and swollen; the 
surface cold and clammy ; the ghastly visage ; 

''Eheu ! quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore !" 

When Death comes to us in his most welcome form, he 
borrows the garb of beautiful and gentle sleep. Then the 
tyrant lays down his iron sceptre, and his cold hand falls 
softly on the weary heart, now ceasing to throb, now 
about to rest from its long, and toilsome, and palpitating 
efforts. On the other hand, an unnatural sleep sometimes 
assumes the aspect of the last agony ; the eyes start from 
their sockets, the ears tingle with horrid sounds, the 
nostrils dilate widely ; the face, pale and livid by turns, is 
agitated by the wildest expressions, and the foam gathers 
upon the shut teeth and the purple lips. Such is the sleep 
of terror, intemperance, and crime ; and such I have seen 

7* 



7-4 Sleep. 

follow mesmeric manipulations. Dreams usually attend 
such sleep, and indeed always give evidence of imperfect 
sleep. To explain by the hypothesis I have offered, I 
would suggest that certain portions of the brain continu- 
ing awake, in a state of tension or erethism, go on in the 
same train of thought or emotion, commenced previously 
to falling asleep, or become habitual. These share in a 
determination of blood to the head, which forms an ele- 
ment of the sleeping condition, and we thus account for 
the well-known fact that emotions and sensations dreamed 
are often more vivid, and forcibly impressed, than they 
would be in the waking man, who wonders at, but yields 
to, their influence over him. Parts in this state of ere- 
thism may arouse other parts of the brain, the dream thus 
becoming more and more confused and complicated, or 
the subject being fully awakened. In this seemingly in- 
congruous condition, we find the phenomena of ^^ self-con- 
scious sleep,^^ whether occurring naturally, or mesmeri- 
cally produced, and those of ordinary somnambulism. 

"When sleep is perfect, unconsciousness must be com- 
plete ; but this state is probably rare, so that many be- 
lieve the mind to be always active, and that we dream 
always. The consciousness of being asleep is felt by 
some persons often, by all perhaps occasionally. Aristotle 
was subject to annoying dreams of danger; but, after they 
had lasted awhile, he used to whisper to himself, " Don't 
be frightened; this is only a dream. '^ I know an indi- 
vidual who frequently gets rid of an unpleasant dream 



Sleep. 75 

by his simple volition, being aware that he is asleep, and 
waking himself. The same person can, as is said of 
many others, awake himself at any desired period, with a 
good deal of certainty, by a determination previously 
formed. He is a light sleeper of acute sensibilities. 
Self-conscious sleep is incorrectly asserted by Elliotson to 
be peculiar to the mesmeric state. It is less rare than 
has been supposed ; occurring not only in dreams as above, 
but I have met with it also in a natural somnambulist, 
Nancy Eector, whose case is published in the American 
Journal of Medical Sciences^ vol. xxv. 

More strange and unaccountable is that sort of double 
consciousness which displays itself in the arrangement of 
a conversation, in which one of the parts is borne by the 
sleeper. ^' Dr. Samuel Johnson dreamed sometimes of one 
of his wordy contests, waking in bad humor, because his 
adversary got the better of him in the argument.^ ^ " Yan 
Goens dreamed that he was unable to answer questions, 
to which his neighbor gave correct replies. ^^ " Lichten- 
berg dreamt that he was telling a story, of which he 
could not recollect a principal circumstance, and that a 
bystander reminded him of it."*^ There is something 
analogous, perhaps, in the stories of somnambulists, whose 
memory seems double ; connecting together the events of 
the waking state, and those of the sleeping state, but 
keeping them entirely separate. Every one has read of 
the porter who miscarried a bundle while drunk, and for- 



76 Sleep. 

got all about it until he got drunk again^ when he cor- 
rected his error. 

In Holland's Essay on tlie Brain as a Double Organ, 
and Wigan's Views of tlie Dualtti/ of the Mind, we shall, 
I think, iSnd the best explanations of such facts. A por- 
tion of either hemisphere may be too much excited for 
the natural collapse of sleep ; and then we shall have, 
from the congestion and mingled irritation which must 
affect it, all the morbid effects of intravascular pressure. 
The phenomena exhibited must vary relevantly to the 
waking part of the brain, and in some measure doubtless 
to the nature too of the erethism existing; there will be 
conscious sleep, dreaming^ somnambulism more or less 
complicated, volition and sensibility more or less active, 
or even paralysis and spasmodic action of muscles, as in 
the case alluded to above. The exaltation of the faculties 
of the mind in sleep is also best accounted for by this 
reference to the waking state of a part of the brain, to 
which, because of its activity, the general determination 
of blood to the head is particularly directed, besides that 
it will be apt to receive all the nervous power generated, 
according to Matteucci^s opinion, in every part of the 
system, by the functional changes going on as well in 
sleep as when awake. This phenomenon is much dwelt 
on by the mesmerists, as occurring in magnetic sleep, 
which is always partial. It happens, also, in ordinary 
somnambulism and in natural sleep. Of the former, 
Jane Rider's case, published by Dr. Belden, is a striking 



Sleep. 77 

instance; Nancy Rector's but little less so. Burdacli 
gives several examples of the latter. '' Voltaire/' says 
a writer in the Diet, des Sciences Iledicales, '^ dreamed a 
whole canto of his Henriade, in a form differing from the 
original.^' Kruger resolved mathematical problems, and 
Eeinholdt deduced metaphysical categories, in sleep. 
An ingenious friend of mine, an engineer, has attained, 
when asleep, several mechanical inventions. I have had 
frequently under my care a lady of highly nervous tem- 
perament, subject to very severe and tenacious attacks of 
hysteria. A portion of the paroxysm usually passed into 
the state of sleep or apparent sleep. In this condition, 
there was occasionally exhibited an extreme degree of 
mental activity ; she has dictated eloquent and pathetic 
discourses, and recited verses of great melody and force 
of imagination and thought. She never rises, or walks ; 
there is always great gloom and depression of mind ; her 
eyes are closed, and she weeps incessantly. 

Sir "Walter Scott put off the solution of difficulties in 
his numerous works until morning; expecting to get over 
them on awaking. He says in his diary, ^^ The half hour 
between waking and rising has, all my life, proved propi- 
tious to any task which was exercising my invention. 
When I got over any knotty difficulty in a story, or have 
had to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I 
first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged 
upon me. This is so much the case, that I am in the 
habit of relying on it.'' At this time, the brain would 



78 Sleep. 

receive at once the influx and impulse of the accumukted 
nervous force that had been gradually generated in the 
tissues, and not expended during his sound sleep. It is 
to this accumulation that I would ascribe the necessity of 
waking at all ; and hence I am led to believe that the 
brain is only one of the sources of sensorial energy, 
nervous power, nervous force. 

There is little difference between dreaming and somnam- 
bulism of ordimiry character. Dreams may be suggested 
by whispering in the ear, low enough not to awaken, but 
loud enough to affect the sense of the sleeper ; a physio- 
logical fact, of which Satan was cognizant, and of which 
he took advantage in his unfair practices upon our mother 
Eve, at whose sleeping ear Milton's poetic vision saw him 
^^ squat like a toad.'^ Answers may be obtained, and 
action aroused in this way. I have known a dialogue 
thus carried on; and Beattie tells us of an officer played 
upon by his comrades, who induced him, by whispers, to 
go through the whole ceremony of a duel, till waked by 
his pistol. ^^ He was told that he had fallen overboard, 
and began to imitate the movements of swimming : being 
warned that a shark was following him, he dived from his 
couch upon the floor. When he was notified that a battle 
had commenced, and was raging around him, he ran 
away,'^ 

The eye of the somnambulist may be either closed or 
open ; but ^^ their sense is shut/^ They are fixed and 
immovable ; the pupil usually dilated, and insensible to 



Sleep. 79 

light. I once saw an exception to this rule^ the eye be- 
ing wide staring, and the pupil contracting on the ap- 
proach of a candle, which the subject did not notice. The 
step is firm, and often quick. Objects must be seen, as 
they are ayoided. The extreme sensibility of the eye in 
one case under my observation was such that the faintest 
lines of writing were perceived in profound darkness, and 
the most rapid movements carried on with precision ; the 
subject using no light, but running up and down stairs, 
and from one apartment to another, without displacing 
pieces of furniture lying in her way accidentally, or placed 
there on purpose. 

The Lausanne Transactions contain the case of a 
somnambulist who sometimes opened his eyes to examine 
where he was, or where his inkstand stood, and then shut 
them again, dipping his pen every now and then, and 
writing on, but never opening his eyes while he wrote 
on from line to line regularly, though he corrected some 
errors of his pen and in spelling ; '^ so much easier was 
it for him to refer to his ideas of the positions of things," 
says the relator, '^ than to his perceptions of them." Dar- 
win mentions a young lady who occasionally in her sleep 
sung and recited poetry. In repeating some lines from 
Pope, she had forgotten a word, and began again, endeav- 
oring to recollect it. It was shouted aloud several times 
in her ear, but to no purpose ; yet, after many trials, she 
at length regained it herself. 

From Hone's Every Bay Booh I take the following 



80 Sleep. 

strange case^ related since by Dendy : ^' A lad^ Davis, aet. 
sixteen years, rose, got Lis whip, put on a spur, and went 
to the stable; not finding his saddle, he inquired for it; 
being asked what he wanted with it, he replied — ' to go 
his round ;' being a butcher's boy. He then got on the 
horse without a saddle, and was going out, but was stop- 
ped and taken off by force. Mr. Eidge, a surgeon, being 
sent for, stood by him some time, during which he thought 
himself at the turnpike gate, and took sixpence out of 
his pocket to pay the toll. It was returned to him, but 
he insisted on its being changed, and resisted an effort, 
made in jest, to cheat him. While Mr. Eidge was bleed- 
ing him, he joined in the conversation. After an hour 
he awoke, went again to sleep, and was well next morn- 
ing." 

Burdach asserts that ^^ there is not known a single ex- 
ample of an immoral action committed in the state of 
natural somnambulism.^' This would be strange, indeed, 
if true. Townsend and Mayo utter an exulting boast 
to the same effect, in reference to mesmeric somnambul- 
ism — a point still more difficult to establish. 

The necessary amount of sleep must differ in the vari- 
ous tribes, as well as in different individuals, accord- 
ing to numerous and varied contingencies. The average 
proportion of time thus employed by our race may be 
stated pretty fairly, I think, at one-third. The allot- 
ment of Sir William Jones, slightly altered from an old 
English poet, does not depart much from this standard i-r— 



Sleep. 81 

"Seven hours to books, to soothing slumber seven ; 
Ten to the world allot, and all to Heaven." 

The busy engagements of ambition and avarice may in- 
duce men to subtract more or less from their due repose, 
but any considerable deduction must be made at great 
risk to both mind and body. Sir John Sinclair, who 
slept eight hours himself, says that, in his researches into 
the subject of longevity, he found long life under*every 
circumstance, every course of habit ; some old men being 
abstinent, some intemperate; some active, and some in- 
dolent; but all had slept well and long. Yet he gives a 
letter from a correspondent, recording the case of an old 
man of ninety-one who had slept through life but four 
hours a day. Alfred the Great slept eight hours, Jeremy 
Taylor but three. Dr. Gooch tells us of an individual 
who slept only jQfteen minutes in the day; but this is 
scarcely credible. Bonaparte, during the greater part of 
his active life, was content with four or five hours' sleep; 
the same is said of Frederick the Great, and of John 
Hunter. I know familiarly a person whose average has 
been even lower than this; I have heard his wife say 
that they were married four years before she had ever 
seen him asleep. Seneca is quoted as telling the incredi- 
ble story of Mecasnas, that he had passed three years with- 
out sleeping a single hour. Boerhaave says of himself 
that he was six weeks without sleep, from intense and 
continued study. Statements like these demand close 
examination and clear proof. 
8 



82 Sleep. 

Of long-protracted sleep there are numerous and won- 
derful taleS; from the story of the Seven Sleepers of 
EphesuS; and their dog — to be found in the early legends 
of the Church; in the Koran^ chapter of the Cave; all 
over the East^ as Gibbon tells us; and even in Scandinavia 
— down to the exquisite Rip Van Winkle of our own 
Washington Irving. In the PMlosophicdl Transactions, 
we read of one Samuel Clinton^ a laboring man, who fre- 
quently slept several weeks at a time, and once more 
than three months, without waking. In the Berlin Me- 
moirs of the Academy of Sciences, there is a curious 
history of a lady of Nismes, who fell asleep irresistibly at 
sunrise, woke for a brief interval at noon, fell asleep again, 
and continued in that state until seven or eight in the 
evening, when she awoke and remained awake until the 
next sunrise. Old age and infancy sleep much. Old 
Parr slept almost constantly; Demoivre, in advanced life, 
a large part of his time. 

The desire of sleep is one of the most urgent demands 
of nature. Some boys slept, from fatigue, on board of 
Nelson's ship, at the battle of the Nile. Among the im- 
pressive incidents of Sir John Moore's disastrous retreat 
to Corunna in Spain, not the least striking is the recorded 
fact that many of his soldiers steadily pursued their 
march while fast asleep. Burdach, however, affirms that 
this is not uncommon among soldiers. Franklin slept 
nearly an hour swimming on his back. An acquaintance 
of mine traveling with a party in North Carolina, being 



Sleep. 83 

greatly fatigued, was observed to be sound asleep in his 
saddle. His horse, being a better walker, went far in 
advance of the rest. On crossing a hill, they found him 
on the ground snoring quietly. His horse had fallen, as 
was evident from his broken knees, and had thrown his 
rider on his head on a hard surface, without waking him. 
Animals of the lower orders obey peculiar laws in 
regard to sleep. Fish are said to sleep soundly; and we 
are told, by Aristotle, that the tench may be taken in 
this state, if approached cautiously. Many birds and 
beasts of prey take their repose in the daytime. When 
kept in captivity, this habit undergoes a change, which 
makes us doubt whether it was not the result of necessity 
which demanded that they should take advantage of the 
darkness, silence, and the unguarded state of their vic- 
tims. In the menagerie at Paris, even the hyena sleeps 
at night, and is awake by day. They all, however, seek, 
as favoring the purpose, a certain degree of seclusion and 
shade, with the exception of the lion, who, Burdach in- 
forms us, sleeps at noonday, in the open plain — and the 
eagle and condor, which poise themselves on the most ele- 
vated pinnacle of rock in the clear blue atmosphere, and 
dazzling sunlight. Birds, however, are furnished with a 
nictitating membrane generally to shelter the eye from 
light. Fish prefer to retire to sleep under the shadow of 
a rock, or a woody bank. Of domestic animals, the 
horse seems to require least sleep, and that he usually 
takes in the erect posture. I knew one who was apt to 



84 Sleep. 

fall when he went to sleep standing. I have seen it hap- 
pen to him many times. 

Birds that roost in a sitting posture are furnished with 
a well-adapted mechanism^ which keeps them firmly sup- 
ported without voluntary or conscious action. The tendon 
of the claws is so arranged as to be tightened by their 
weight when the thighs are bent, thus contracting closely, 
and grasping the bough or perch. In certain other ani- 
mals which sleep erect, the articulations of the foot and 
knee are described by Dumeril as resembling the spring 
of a pocket-knife, which opens the instrument and serves 
to keep the blade in a line with the handle. 

It has been prettily said that, without Hope and Sleep, 
man would be inconceivably wretched. The circumstances 
favoring sleep, besides a quiet conscience, a mind unex- 
cited, and a body free from pain, are, a recumbent posture, 
silence, and darkness. When Ptolemy demanded of a 
soothsayer: ^^What would make one sleep well in the 
night ?^' ^^ The best way,^' he replied, ^^ was to have divine 
and celestial meditations, and to use honest actions in the 
daytime." Miiller says he could go to sleep at will on 
assuming a recumbent position. Bonaparte, during his 
grand career, required no condition but darkness; yet, at 
St. Helena, he suffered from sleeplessness among his other 
tortures. Habit exercises an almost omnipotent influence 
in this matter. A distinguished watchmaker, having re- 
tired from business, was in danger of phrenitis for want 
of sleep. After several miserable weeks of this privation. 



Sleep. 85 

some one suggested a return to his old place of abode. 
The experiment succeeded perfectly, for he fell asleep 
in his former workshop at once^ rejoicing in the loud 
ticking of scores of clocks and watches. 

Of contrasted impressibility is the case of the old 
harpist given by BrandiS; who slept the instant he left 
oflF playing; but, although undisturbed by other sounds, 
woke up immediately as any one touched the strings of 
his instrument. 

Deprived of sleep, I have said man is inexpressibly 
wretched, and eager and ceaseless has ever been his search 
after the means of procuring this inestimable blessing. 
Narcotics are everywhere instinctively sought and eagerly 
employed; and stimulants, as indirectly narcotic, have un- 
fortunately become familiar beverages. Alas ! what a pic- 
ture of life is presented to us in the fact that unconscious- 
ness of and insensibility to care and anguish constitute 
the best boon that can be offered to suffering humanity ! 
If Sancho Panza had reason for the heartfelt blessing he 
bestows upon him who first invented sleep, surely all 
nations will rise up and call him blessed who shall dis- 
cover the means of procuring sleep at will, without coun- 
terbalancing consequences of an unpleasant nature. The 
waters of Lethe, which possessed the power of obliterating 
all remembrance of sorrow and of crime, would not be 
more desirable. Opium — magnum donum Dei — is as 
yet our best hypnotic; although, as is but too well known, 
its effects are often disagreeable and injurious, and its 

8* 



86 Sleep, 

habitual use destructive to the firmest constitution. The 
hop; the lettuce^ and the rest of the class are far inferior 
in strength to the poppy, and cannot be depended on. Of 
late we have exulted in the discovery of a new class of 
anaesthetics as they are called, which bring a happy insen- 
sibility to pain, usually accompanied with a deep sleep. 
The slumber is, however, a transient one ; attended often 
with unpleasant, nay, alarming symptoms ; not entirely 
free from danger of sudden death, and, as is asserted, not 
absolutely exempt from suspicion of a more or less lasting 
derangement of the sensorial functions, and especially the 
most highly valued among them, intellection. In the great 
and increasing list of agents of this character which are 
becoming the subject of assiduous experiment, I cannot 
help hoping that some one may be found, at least com- 
paratively and generally safe, innocent, and in good degree 
efficient. 

How all these act — narcotics and anaesthetics — in 
inducing sleep, is a very difficult question to answer. 
That cerebral congestion results from their action as an 
essential element, seems certain. Those which are at the 
same time stimulant, and unfortunately none of them is 
absolutely devoid of this property, must create a dangerous 
degree of coincident erethism of the brain, a state con- 
trasted with and opposed to the collapse upon which true 
and natural sleep depends. Hence the dangers arising 
from their exhibition; hence the morbid consequences 



Sleep. 87 

following it, among which we must enumerate convulsion^ 
coma, apoplexy. 

Nor are the mental disturbances less prominent; and 
we are all familiar with the dreamy, vaporous/ and insane 
states ascribable to the use of bang or haschisch, opium, 
especially when inhaled, and alcohol. In this world of 
pain and sorrow, we have no absolute good without some 
corresponding and inseparable evil : " the trail of the ser- 
pent is over it all/^ and every effort has hitherto failed to 
provide a pure hypnotic, soporific, or anodyne, which 
shall be available without deranging the system seriously, 
either by its direct or consecutive effects. 

Many of the wisest and most philanthropic thinkers, 
abandoning the search for such means among physical 
agents as altogether hopeless, have sought them in certain 
moral influences. Southey, in his Doctor , that volume 
of almost unrivaled richness of thought and quaint ex- 
pression, has enumerated all these aids to somnolence so 
fully, that I shall conclude with the paragraph ending 
his Chapter YI. ante Initial; advising an experiment of 
like kind to each of my readers when troubled with sleep- 
lessness. ^^I put my arms out of bed; I turned the pil- 
low for the sake of applying a cold surface to my cheek. 
I stretched my feet into the cold corner. I listened to 
the river, and to the ticking of my watch. I thought of 
all sleepy sounds, and all soporific things; the flow of 
water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the 
waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarin's 



88 Sleep. 

head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, 
Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. Proser's poems, Mr. 
Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I tried the 
device of my own childhood, and fancied that the bed 
revolved with me round and round. At length, Morpheus 
reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's Divinity Lectures ; where 
the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmo- 
sphere, and the streamy candlelight, were all alike som- 
nific; where he, who by strong effort lifted up his head, 
and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all 
around him asleep. Lettuces, cowslip wine, poppy syrup, 
mandragora, hop pillows, spider's web pills, and the 
whole tribe of narcotics up to bang and the black drop, 
would have failed, but this was irresistible; and thus, 
twenty years after date, I found benefit from having 
attended the course." 



pain. 



PAIN. 



AMONG- the numerous elements of disease^ often a 
highly complicated condition, none can be found 
more important or more urgent in their claims upon our 
attention than thosfe which affect or belong to the sen- 
sorial system. Universally distributed, and everywhere 
essentially impulsive, the active principle resident in this 
system manifests its healthy force, and its perverted in- 
fluences, by the most unequivocal tokens. Sensation, in- 
tellection, motion, nay, all other modes of living action, 
if there be any other not comprised under one of these 
wide terms, are disturbed and disordered by its abnormal 
states. The symptoms vary necessarily with the modes 
of disturbance ; with the structure and office of the parts 
which are hurt by the efficient cause of evil ; and with 
numerous contingencies, some of them obvious, and others 



92 Pain. 

obscure, which go to modify the external manifestations 
of internal disorder and injury. Palsy, cramp, spasm, 
convulsion, amentia, delirium, mania, coma, with all the 
aches and agonies '^ that flesh is heir to,'^ may be enume- 
rated here. So generally indeed is suffering connected 
with derangement of health, that the word Pain has al- 
most come to express the same idea conveyed by the 
general term Disease. 

Physiologists and metaphysicians have long labored 
alike in vain to offer us a satisfactory definition of pairiy 
or to show clearly wherein it consists. We must content 
ourselves, I fear, with regarding it as a simple act of con- 
sciousness — indescribable, undefinable — an ultimate phe- 
nomenon, like its antagonist and contrast. Pleasure. Sir 
John Stoddart, uttering briefly the generally received 
views of philosophers on this point, says, ^^The states of 
sensation which are agreeable to our nature,'^ (accord- 
ant?) ^^ we properly call pleasure; those of an opposite 
kind we call pain.'^ Feuchtersleben regards pain as 
^^ truly or justly the awakener of intellectual, or rather, 
in more general phrase, of active life.'' But between 
these two opinions there is a direct antagonism. The 
'^ awakener of active life,'' by which I suppose is meant 
desire in its wide sense, cannot be unaccordant, or other- 
wise than physiologically agreeable to nature. There is 
an intrinsic difficulty here. It is hardly possible to con- 
ceive sensations or impressions in their own nature neu- 
tral ; each one tends to produce pleasure or pain ; carry 



Pain. 93 

tlicjm farther, and all become sources of pain by their in- 
tensity or the unadaptedness of the organism to sustain 
undue degree or protraction of impression. 

Philosophy regards man as a part of the universal frame 
of nature, with every portion of which he is normally, 
and ought to be, in harmony. But his relations with 
external nature are so exceedingly multiplied, complex, 
and delicate, that these harmonies originally determined 
are too readily disarranged and broken. The existence 
of disease and pain then becomes one branch of the dark 
problem of the origin of evil, a topic of profoundest in- 
terest and obscurity. We cannot hope to solve this fear- 
ful riddle ; yet there are certain suggestions, made on 
high authority, and almost universally received, which 
draw after them, logically, such portentous influences, that 
we cannot altogether pretermit the investigation into their 
truth or falsehood. 

Prometheus-like, our profession has always confronted 
the various modes and agents of suffering with unshrink- 
ing resistance. It is incumbent on us clearly to under- 
stand by what warrant we thus oppose ourselves to " the 
manifest destiny^' of our race, pertinaciously striving to 
unlink consequence from its antecedent, and put an end 
to all physical evil, without reference or discrimination as 
to its source, its immediate object, or its final cause. 
For my part, I do not belong to the school of Zeno : I 
look upon pain as not only an evil, but as the chief of 
physical evils. I have considered myself its sworn enemy 



94 Pain. 

from the time when I first enlisted myself in the ranks of 
medicine, and took upon me the sacred responsibilities of 
the divine art of healing. It then became my duty also 
to protract life, and, as far as my ability extended, to 
avert death ; but how could I, in any given case, looking 
to future contingencies, how could I be assured that life 
was a good to be desired — death an evil to be shunned ? 
Many instances present themselves, from time to time, in 
which the contrary seems reasonable to be believed, nay, 
may be proved to be certainly true. I was not, however, 
invested with any right to distinguish between special 
examples, being bound to proceed upon a universal 
principle, and protect and prolong a life, hateful, it might 
be, to the possessor, and burdensome and injurious to all 
connected with him. 

In reference to pain, there could exist no such misgiv- 
ings. Justice, in punishing capitally the most atrocious 
offender, is now, by all men, denied the right to torture 
him; and the guillotine, the gallows, and the garrote are 
carefully adjusted to render his death as nearly as possible 
an absolute euthanasia. In whatever light pain be viewed, 
I have always felt that it was the instant duty, the most 
urgent obligation of the physician to relieve, subdue, and 
put an end to it, by every means not obviously inconsist- 
ent with the overpowering prohibition which forbids his 
assuming a control over that life which our laws and 
customs entrust daily within the power of a dozen men 



Pain. 95 

chosen by lot^ and a judge often selected to his high seat 
for mere partisan availability. 

There are two sets of objections urged against this 
doctrine I have thus laid down as to the mission of the 
hakim or medicine-man, wherever found, of whatever 
nation, school, or sect. Certain moralists have lately in- 
terfered with stern theological denunciation of those who 
endeavor by anaesthetics to render the painful period of 
parturition a scene of somewhat less than the natural 
agonies — to subtract somewhat from the terrible throes 
and anxieties of maternity. ^^ It is so ordered by Provi- 
dence,'' doubtless, say they, for wise purposes; as the 
devout Mussulman ejaculates, ^^It is written on the fore- 
head :'^ and not a little learning has been wasted on the 
inquiry whether the connection between pain and pro- 
creation is that of a curse to be fulfilled, or a penalty to 
be piously and resignedly endured. It is but a fair ex- 
tension of these notions to pronounce all disease, or at 
any rate a large proportion of maladies, the natural, fixed, 
and inevitable results of wrong-doing, either on the part 
of the sufierer, or of his progenitors, as in the instance of 
the groaning mother, and so to deny us the right to inter- 
pose between curse and consequence as established by the 
Great Founder of all nature's laws. We are forbidden, 
on this principle, to relieve the imprudent reveler from 
the derangements following excess, and the debauchee 
from the efi'ect of his impure habits of life. I do not 
intend to say that any of the disputants have gone in terms 



96 Pain. 

to this extent of absurdity; but I affirm that it is not 
possible to draw any line which shall serve to exclude 
these as necessary inferences from the course of argument 
which they have boldly taken. I shall not occupy time 
by going over this field of debate, already victoriously 
trodden by Simpson and others, who have displayed in 
the contest an amount of clerkly scholarship highly 
creditable to our profession, but pass on to the second 
point of objection, far more speciously chosen, and more 
ingeniously maintained. 

The usefulness of pain, I mean not its ultimate moral 
efficacy as a means of trial and discipline, but its purpose 
physically as a sentinel and guardian, giving notice of 
danger and protecting from injury, has been often and elo- 
quently dwelt on. ^^ The laws of nature,'^ says Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy, in his Salmonia, " are all directed by Divine 
Wisdom for the preservation of life and the increase of hap- 
piness. Pain seems in all cases to precede the mutilation or 
destruction of those organs which are essential to vitality, 
and for the end of preserving them; but the mere process 
of dying seems to be the falling into a deep slumber; 
and in animals who have no fear of death depending on 
imagination, it can hardly be accompanied by very intense 
suffering. In the human being, moral and intellectual 
motives constantly operate in enhancing the fear of death^ 
which, without these motives in a reasoning being, would 
probably become null, and the love of life be lost upon 
every slight occasion of pain or disgust; but imagination 



Pain. 97 

is creative with respect to both these passions^ which, if 
they exist in animals^ exist independent of reason, or 
as instincts. Pain seems intended by an all-wise Provi- 
dence to prevent the dissolution of organs, and cannot 
follow their destruction.^^ 

It is surely unnecessary to comment upon the hardi- 
hood of assertion in the above quoted paragraph, and the 
singular inconsequence of the deductions drawn ; but the 
subject deserves a careful examination. The most serious 
practical results hang upon our decision in reference to 
this question. If we must depend upon pain, and pain 
only or chiefly, for our indications of either the kind or 
degree of risk to which life is exposed; if we can only 
ascertain the injury to the organism which we are called 
upon to prevent, remedy, or repair, by the suffering with 
which it is connected, then it behoves us to be very cau- 
tious how, and how far, we venture to intrude any palli- 
atives between us and these exclusive sources of our so 
much desired knowledge. Anesthetics, anodynes, nar- 
cotics, would be altogether prohibited, or their use per- 
mitted under nice restrictions. Nay, in cases so fre- 
quently occurring, in which the degree of uneasiness is in 
no part sufficient of itself to guide us, we should feel our- 
selves obliged to solicit and arouse the sensitiveness to 
pain as a necessary guardian and guide in the step we 
are about to take for the restoration of our patient. But 
the allegations thus made, and all others tending to sus- 
tain the same principle, may be shown to be unfounded 

9* 



98 Pain, 

and untenable by the following considerations : All the 
processes of life^ all vital actions^ lead to the general de- 
cay of the organism^ the special disintegration of the tis- 
sues; death is the necessary correlative and final result 
of life. Now death^ by gradual decline from old age, 
involves more suffering than almost any other mode of 
destruction of our frail frames; but this suffering is 
clearly not protective of any portion of the complicated 
animal structure, and to this, if we escape all others, we 
must come at last. Here it is clear that the doctrine of 
the protective nature or purpose of pain is entirely inap- 
plicable. There is no book in any language full of such 
profound melancholy to the reader as Day's Treatise on 
the Diseases of Advanced Life. Here we see graphically 
portrayed the inevitable consequences of the protraction 
of existence. Every organ loses somewhat of its capacity 
for action, and becomes embarrassed by the demands 
made upon it for the performance of its function ; '^ the 
grasshopper is a burden ;'' its impaired sensibilities admit 
no enjoyment; ^Hhe days shall come in which thou shalt 
say, ^I have no pleasure in them;' '' annoyances of many 
sorts, however, find sufficient inlet, and its continued 
vitality is but a prolongation of anguish. 

The eloquent letter of Cicero de Senectute offers us 
consolation only in view of the negative consequences of 
old age; the diminution, namely, of the capacities for en- 
joyment, and that of the social importance which belongs 
to the period of useful activity. But even his optimis- 



Pain. 99 

tical philosopliy evades the consideration of the positive 
inflictions of decrepitude and dotage^ though just as cer- 
tain^ and infinitely less tolerable. The poet^ here far 
more philosophical than the philosopher^ sayS; with a sad 
truthfulness — 

<< Thus fares it still in our decay, 
And yet the wiser mind 
Mourns less for what Time takes away 

Than what he leaves behind."— Wordsworth. 

Farther : if the benevolent relation of pain to our well- 
being, which is contended for, actually existed, there would 
of course be some relevancy between the nature and de- 
gree of warning, and the nature and degree of risk or 
injury impending and foreshadowed. Nay, this relevancy 
must be calculable, uniform, and suggestive, or it would 
be a mere mockery. But, if we look into the facts, we 
shall find, on the other hand, that of many forms of dis- 
ease most dangerous to life, we have no intimation at all, 
of many others no timely or available intimation, from 
pain; that in many diseases we suffer severe pain which 
is unconnected with danger, seeming sometimes to con- 
stitute the whole history of the case in itself; and that in 
some of the most painful maladies there is no remediable 
condition to which our attention may in this way be di- 
rected. I cannot go very extensively into the details of 
this branch of my subject, but must give some examples 
of each character alluded to above. Tubercular deposi- 



100 Pain. 

tion in the lung silently accumulates without exciting any 
notice until the patient is past help or hope. Minute 
changes in the cerebral substance, unsuspected, and un- 
productive of any complaint on the part of the subject, 
progressively bring on paralysis, epilepsy, and all the 
appalling forms of insanity. Cephalalgia of the greatest 
intensity, repeated at intervals through a long and weary 
life, is often indicative of and followed by no special 
change, of the nature or cause of which, or any means of 
avoiding or remedying it, we might regard the suffering 
as suggestive. Many varieties of neuralgia exhaust the 
utmost powers of human endurance without leading even 
to a reasonable conjecture as to their origin, or offering a 
hint of any method of evasion by which the victim may 
escape their dreaded recurrence. Cancer affords us a 
lamentable example of the existence — in strong contrast 
with the above — of palpable change of structure, in which 
the intolerable pain seems to be a most gratuitous addi- 
tion to the danger already but too obvious and unavoid- 
able. Hydrophobia presents, if I may be permitted so to 
speak, a most ingenious superposition of a horrible mode 
of anguish entirely unnecessary to the extinction of life, 
in the super-sensitiveness of the cutaneous surface, and 
even of the organ of vision, which afflicts with terrible 
spasms, and revolting convulsion, the miserable wretch 
about to die under the tortures of universal agony from 
an incurable poison, and in the desperate struggles of 
suffocation. 



t 



Pain. 101 

If, after all this, any one should still insist that the 
seat of disease is often learned by the locality of pain, 
and that suffering tends to deter us from imprudence and 
excess, I answer — that pain frequently misleads us too, 
and confuses our diagnosis, and that suffering not seldom 
drives on to recklessness and despair ; and, as nothing 
evil is absolutely and exclusively evil, but, in the hands 
of the wise and reflective, is made to admit of some com- 
pensation and offset; and as from the worst poisons we 
have been able to derive some therapeutical influences, so 
I am ready to acknowledge that, by careful and long-con- 
tinued observation, we have succeeded in making even 
pain administer to the advantage of the sufferer. But I 
deliberately deny its necessity to the philanthropic pur- 
poses of our profession, and, if I could, would enjoy inef- 
fable delight in effecting its total abolition — its external 
extinction. I leave to the surgeon the defence of the use 
of angesthetics during operations; but I should be very 
unwilling to employ for my own person any one who 
needed such warning or guidance as might be derived 
from my agonies while under the edge of his knife, or 
bound and dragged by his mechanical apparatus. His 
knowledge of physiology and anatomy, if as thorough as 
it ought to be, will require no such aid. 

It has been a very general error, among physiologists 
and philosophers, to regard pain as the mere correlative 
of pleasure, and a necessary result contingent upon the 
organization, which renders a tissue, part, or organ sus- 



102 Pain. 

ceptible of pleasurable sensation. There is^ indeed, clear 
proof that there is no such connection between them. I 
am far from impugning, by this course of reasoning, the 
benevolence of nature, or of the Great First Cause, the 
Author of Nature. I do not deny, as I will not venture 
to affirm, the preponderance of enjoyment over suffering 
in the sensitive creation. I am only inquiring into the 
relation, if any exist, between this enjoyment and this 
suffering. 

Our very instincts — which guide us to the acts essential 
to the sustenance of life — our very instincts, when obeyed 
promptly, rather relieve wants, and remove mere uneasi- 
ness, than give any notable degree of positive pleasure. 
Hunger and thirst, when enhanced by protraction, become 
sources of indescribable agony ; if satisfied at their first 
suggestion, they cannot surely be said to be productive of 
anything like a corresponding delight ; of their intermedi- 
ate stages of demand and supply, let us suppose the ba- 
lance to be equably adjusted. The most irresistible of 
them all, and differing from them as affording the high- 
est physical pleasure of which the animal frame is capa- 
ble, presents no mode of pain or suffering adapted to the 
peculiar sensitiveness of the parts concerned, in any simi- 
lar way, specific or peculiar. 

By the touch, we receive indefinite degrees and varie- 
ties of pleasant sensation; but how incomparably inferior 
. in degree to the sufferings which find their inlet here ! 
Heat and cold, when adapted to its habitual acquirements, 



Pain. 103 

are; we say, refreshing and comfortable ; but no language 
can convey the idea of the agony inflicted by the depres- 
sion and elevation of temperature. Light, colors, forms, 
all modes of beauty, transport the eye ; but let a gnat in- 
trude upon that delicate organ— nay, lay on it a single 
grain of sand, or the finest hair, and its susceptibility of 
pleasure is not only lost entirely, but new and uncon- 
nected suffering arises, destructive, not protective ; in no 
way allied to, or dependent upon, the nice harmony of ana- 
tomical or mechanical formation which fits it for its office, 
but an entirely separable and distinct capacity or subject- 
ivity. For there can be no reason why a cornea as hard 
as flint, covered by a conjunctiva as insensible to mecha- 
nical impression, and as indestructible as the diamond, 
should not admit light as well as the present tender sur- 
face ; though we may imagine some necessary relation to 
exist between the mobility and the delicate sensitiveness 
of iris and retina. 

Nor must we omit to remark that many parts, tissues, 
and organs, altogether insusceptible of pleasure, are high- 
ly sensitive to pain. Many, did I say ? nay, the asser- 
tion is true of the vastly greater portion of the animal 
organism. The pleura — how keen the lancinating stabs I 
how sharp the pungent stitches which announce its in- 
flammation ! how terrible the torments felt in the nor- 
mally unconscious peritoneum under the same circum- 
stances ! The heart, whose throbbing may shake us me- 
chanically and uneasily under all emotions, but whose 



104 Pain. 

pulsations never convey a sensation of pleasure in any 
contingency, becomes in disease the seat of agonizing 
spasm, heat, and laceration. The brain, which may in 
health be cut or torn to pieces without consciousness, and 
which in no case admits of a pleasurable physical impres- 
sion, will, under the most transient and slightest disturb- 
ances, functional and organic, idiopathic and symptom- 
atic — arising mechanically, as from the movement of a 
swing or of a ship; from sensation, as when the eye is 
subjected to unaccustomed light; from all forms of mental 
emotion and intellectual action — ache insufferably and 
oppressively. The kidney, that most obtuse of the viscera, 
will often, in nephritis and nephralgia, be filled with 
agonies that leave far behind the imagination of the most 
ingenious and malignant inquisitor. The hard gums too, 
and the stony teeth, what surfaces they present, from 
infancy to old age, for daily recurring and unspeakable 
torture and irritation, of which we may defy the shade 
of Sir Humphrey Davy himself — now in a double sense 
immortal — to suggest the smallest possible benefit or 
advantage ! 

Enough has been said, I trust, to show something of the 
true nature and relations of pain as an element of disease. 
Let us proceed to consider it briefly in the light of a 
symptom or sign of disease. Certain rules have been 
offered in regard to the medical or pathological signifi- 
cance of pain, which I will briefly rehearse. 

1st. Pain generally points out the locality of disease. 



Pain. 105 

I need not dwell upon a fact so obvious and familiar. A 
nice and patient examination should always be made of 
any point to which is referred a morbid sensation. Even 
in that most obscure and unaccountable phenomenon — the 
epileptic aura — close inspection has in one or two rare 
instances detected causative change in the condition of 
the part affected by it and radiating it. Inferences lead- 
ing to remedial treatment have been still more rarely 
suggested; as in the displacement of the sesamoid bone^ 
of which we have the history from James^ and one or 
two not dissimilar examples of the alleged prevention 
of attacks, upon drawing tightly a ligature between the 
centre of the aura and the trunk. 

Yet the exceptions to this law are very numerous; and 
some of them highly impressive. Thus we have a pain 
at the top of the shoulder when the liver is inflamed, so 
often that some practitioners (myself among them) have 
never failed to find it present ; while others (as Stokes 
and Andral) deny its coincidence as meriting an introduc- 
tion into the history of the disease. Almost as inexpli- 
cable, but rather more uniform, is the pain in the knee when 
the hip-joint is diseased; the pain in the urethra when 
a calculus is passing from the kidney through a distant 
duct, should also be mentioned here^ and the pain at the 
epigastrium when there is a gallstone in the biliary tube. 
Many intestinal disorders give among children itching of 
the nostrils, and in adults tenesmus and pruritus; and in 
both sometimes a troublesome cough. A nerve at any 
10 



106 Pain. 

point in its course may convey its peculiar sensation, as- 
cribed always by the mind with deluded or misled con- 
sciousness to its peripheral extremity; this being the 
normal seat of its characteristic sensibility. Hence the 
traumatic neuralgia of Lord Anglesea, and the numerous 
similar instances in which those who have undergone 
amputation feel pain of many kinds, heat, cold, pinching, 
crushing, &c., in the' lost fingers and toes. Some of these 
sympathetic misplacements of pain, we profess to under- 
stand and attempt to explain ; others are matters of mere 
empirical observation, in which experience is the only 
guide, and the unenlightened are very likely to be led 
astray. 

2d. Pain as a sensation or act of consciousness is in 
nature modified and determined by the nature of its cause 
or origin, and thus we have (to employ common phrase- 
ology) different kinds of pain indicative, with greater or 
less uniformity, of the kind of morbid change upon which it 
depends; such as inflammation, distension, compression^ 
spasm, or cramp. When there is undue feeling of heat 
in a part, we infer inflammation; lancinating pain shows 
distension with inflammation; compression and distension 
without inflammation give aching; the sensations of spasm 
and cramp are connected with involuntary and tense con- 
traction, and are closely analogous to those which are pro- 
duced by pressure upon the trunk of a nerve, or that 
obscure condition of the nervous filaments which we call 
neuralgia. 



Pain. 107 

To this law also of the relevancy of the modes of pain 
to their causes there are^ however, many exceptions; so 
many that, although we may derive some assistance from 
the observations first recited, they are always to be re- 
garded with some reserve, and must not be depended on 
without some collateral confirmation. Johnson, speaking 
from experience, says the pain from cutting is indistin- 
guishable from that of burning ; sharp lancinating pangs 
occur in cancer, fissures of the sphincter, and some glan- 
dular ailments, as well as in simple colics; and aching is 
a term applied alike to the inefi'able torments of cepha- 
lalgia, the anguish of a decaying tooth, and the oppressive 
annoyances of lumbago and sciatica. The flashes of an 
infernal electricity, which startle the neuralgic, denote 
nothing; as they belong promiscuously to a large class of 
disorders, mechanical (as in calculous affection), inflamma- 
tory, and undefined. 

3d. Pain differs in different tissues, by virtue, as we 
may suppose, of their intimate structure. The serous 
tissues suffer acutely; when under inflammatory action, 
they assume a new and exquisite sensitiveness. Mucous 
membranes and parenchymata, on the other hand, are 
liable to dull but oppressive torture when diseased. We 
all know the sharp stitches of pleurisy; while true pneu- 
monia involves a kind of suffering far less keen. It is 
common to offer as an explanation, not altogether satisfac- 
tory, however, the unyielding density of serous membrane, 
and the great softness and distensibility of mucous and 



108 Pain. 

parenclijmatous tissues. The same difference probably 
exists in cerebral affections; meningeal pain is keen 
and piercing, that of the neurine of the brain would 
seem to be always heavy and dull. This is also affirmed 
of hepatic inflammations; that of the investing mem- 
brane being acute, that of the substance of the liver the 
reverse. Inflammation of the digestive mucous mem- 
brane may proceed unfelt to a fatal extent of disorganiza- 
tion, as in typhus with its follicular ulcerations, and in 
chronic dysenteries, and even in enteritis sometimes, and 
gastritis; but if the investing serous membrane be attacked 
by progressive disease, as very strikingly in perforation, 
and even when forcibly distended as in colic, or strictured 
closely as in hernia and intussusception, the agonies of 
the patient become unendurable. There is a peculiar 
modification of pain met with under certain circumstances, 
consisting in alternate inflictions and remissions at short 
intervals, such as give the name to tic douloureux, which 
may be regarded as the type. These ^^ Tics^^ are com- 
monly supposed to be exclusively characteristic of neu- 
ralgia properly so called ; but they are met with in inflam- 
mations of the antrum and frontal sinus, and in the 
passage of a calculus through the ureter from the kidney. 
4th. The intensity of pain, so naturally considered the 
measure both of the violence and evil tendency of the 
disease producing it, is modified not only by the degree of 
morbid change in the part and its rapidity, but by its 
nature also, and the peculiar character of the part af- 
fected. I need not dwell upon these points. The truth 



Pain. 109 

of the first of the above statements is obvious enough to 
require no comment^ and the most destructive processes, 
if carried on slowly^ will give rise to but a bearable amount 
of sufiering, comparatively speaking, and as a general fact. 
Exemplifications of the second are found in cancer and 
lupus, in rheumatism and gout, in angina pectoris and 
in syphilitic nodes, all of which are remarkable for the 
vehemence of the tortures they inflict. To the third, the 
relation, namely, of pain to the special structure and capa- 
cities of the part, tissue, or organ, I have already had occa- 
sion to allude. We do not wonder at the intensity of pain 
in neuralgia, for the nerve is the seat of sensibility, or in 
the eye, the tongue, the mammae, &c., which are normally 
delicate and exquisitely perceptive; but we are embar- 
rassed to account for the fact that certain parts, entirely 
insensitive in their natural state, become, when inflamed 
or otherwise diseased, keenly alive to pain of the severest 
degree, as we have stated in reference to the serous tissues, 
the membranes investing bones and joints, and some of 
the glandular and parenchymatous structures. 

Do such parts acquire, under the new conditions mor- 
bidly imposed upon them, a new power or faculty not 
previously belonging to them — the faculty of receiving 
impressions, the power of generating nervous force ? If so, 
how is the impression made upon and received by them 
transmitted to the brain, and converted into a sensation ? 
If by nervous cords of communication previously existing, 
why were the parts previously insensible ? Or can such 

10* 



110 Pain. 

cords or nerves exist capable of sensitive impressions^ yet 
conveying none in their natural state ? Or can sensation 
be aroused independently of them as a local faculty, with- 
out the necessity of communication with a central senso- 
rium? These are questions which seem to me worthy of a 
more profound investigation than they have yet received. 

The reflections into which we have been thus led must 
greatly qualify our dependence upon pain as an element 
in the formation of our prognosis. The lung is, as we 
know, the seat of much less suffering, even when fatally 
disorganized, than its investing tunic in very simple tran- 
sient and curable pleurisy. Headache may inflict upon 
its victim unimaginable agonies during a long life, which 
it renders wearisome, but does not abbreviate ; while soft- 
ening, hardening, serous or purulent or hemorrhagic exu- 
dation, may take place silently and unfelt, bringing on 
mental imbecility, furious mania, palsy, apoplexy, and 
epilepsy, evils infinitely worse than death, yet uncon- 
nected with any definite degree or kind of pain. Neu- 
ralgia^ which, in some of its forms, is perhaps — to use the 
phrase of Sydenham — ^Hhe most atrocious'^ of human 
sufferings, scarcely shortens life at all; nay, may exist 
permanently in a part or organ with no obvious, certainly 
with no dangerous, impairment of or impediment to the 
performance of its physiological functions. 

We must not omit to notice the occasional absence of 
pain in the diseases of organs and tissues normally sensi- 
tive. This curious phenomenon may become a token of 



Pain. Ill 

serious import^ and should always be carefully watclied 
and inquired into. It may depend upon very various 
contingencies. We should not fail to ascertain^ as well 
as we can^ the original sensitiveness of the subject affected. 
There is nothing, perhaps, in which individuals differ more 
from each other than in the susceptibility to painful im- 
pressions from like causes. This we see every day in the 
several classes, as the result of habits of life and exposures 
to varied hardships to which they become ^^ callous/^ as 
the phrase is. The different races of men doubtless differ 
greatly in this respect ; so do the several tribes into which 
the races are divided. Among the tribes, we find diver- 
sities of like character exhibited by families, and among 
families by individuals. Sex, temperament, complexion, 
all indicate these diversities, which exist, strongly enough 
marked, within the limits of ordinary health, and are 
often enhanced into morbidity. 

Numerous records of these idiosyncrasies are found in 
the books. Among the most remarkable that I have met 
with is a case of natural anaesthesia, as it has been termed, 
described by Professor Eve, of Augusta, Ga., in the per- 
son of Mr. A., on whom Prof. E. operated for cataract; 
he was immovable, and said he felt no pain. Having had 
a finger injured in a rencontre, he bit it off himself, and 
spat it on the ground, not liking its appearance. He had 
an ulcer on the toe and foot for three years ; from first to 
last, he said it never gave him the least pain. He had 
an abscess in his hand, which threatened his life, involving 



112 Pain. 

the whole forearm and arm with enormous swelling; it 
was opened repeatedly and freely, but during the whole 
time he experienced no pain. His neck having been 
once pustulated by tartar emetic, he did not feel it at all, 
but ordered the application to be renewed. Professor E. 
made three incisions on the back of his neck to relieve 
erysipelatous inflammation. ^^ He was so unconscious of 
the operation, that, after it was performed, he asked that 
it should be done, that he might turn over in bed. He 
told his physician that he had never suffered pain from 
any cause whatever, until his last illness. He was a man 
of great probity, and never boasted of being insensible 
to pain. He had been at one time addicted to the free 
use of alcoholic potations.'^ 

In a certain village of New England, some years since, 
a servant girl in a respectable family professed to be be- 
witched by some cruel person unknown, who chose her 
breast as a pincushion. The physician of the village was 
called in, and did indeed extract from the substance of 
each breast many pins and needles, which, from time to 
time, he found imbedded deeply there. The girl being 
watched was seen to insert them herself; and on being made 
aware that she was thus detected, confessed that her mo- 
tive was to attract notice, become an object of pity, and 
escape from the necessity of labor ; and declared that she 
was led to the practice by the discovery that her breasts 
were totally insusceptible of painful sensation. 

Dr. Lopez has published, in the American Medical 



1 



Pain. 113 

Journal, Philadelphia, a case somewhat similar, of a 
young lady in the sockets of whose eyes spiders were 
alleged to be bred. I saw, myself, an entire spider 
issue from the profoundest recesses of the orbit, behind 
the globe. I will not affirm that the subject of this cu- 
rious history suffered no pain, but she made little or no 
complaint, and unless I very greatly deceived myself, 
found abundant compensation in the notoriety she en- 
joyed during the continuance of the process, by which it 
was calculated that no less than fifty to sixty of these 
repulsive creatures were eliminated from the receptacle of 
the organ of vision, and under its nice and delicate lids. 

Similar examples might be multiplied almost indefi- 
nitely, and placed in contrast with them equally numerous 
instances of morbidly enhanced sensitiveness, which will 

^'Die of a rose in aromatic pain,'' 

or fall into rigid spasm from the effect of a vesicatory. 

But the absence of pain in organs and tissues naturally 
sensitive, is ordinarily of transient character, and depends 
either upon a diminution of the force of the normal actions 
of the part, or of its local vitality on the one hand, or on 
the other upon some cause producing general impairment 
of normal sensibility. The most pronounced degree of 
the first of these conditions occurs in sphacelation, and the 
suddenness of the relief from preceding distress will usu- 
ally be found abundantly impressive to force it upon our 
notice. This relief, however, sometimes happens, as Grood 



114 Pain. 

has observed; with similar suddenness in cases in which 
mortification has not taken place^ as if the irritability and 
sensibility of the part had become at once exhausted; and 
the reaction in which so large a share of disease sometimes 
consists, subsiding, the subject promptly recovers. 

Atrophy of any organ from deficient supply of blood to 
it, and deficient action within it, will occasion the same 
loss of sensitiveness in various degrees. The living ac- 
tions of any part, whatever they may be, generate within 
that part the due amount of nervous force ; when these 
are interfered with, as by lessening its supply of blood or 
checking the return of blood from it, thus oppressing it 
with congestion, or by impeding its free and full connec- 
tion with the nervous centres, as by tumors making inju- 
rious pressure, or by any other morbid local change pro- 
ductive of the effects indicated, its sensitiveness is lost or 
relatively impaired in degree. 

But if the central organs of circulation and nervous 
action are similarly affected, we shall have general im- 
pairment of sensibility. Many complications of this in- 
tractable character are met with, masking dangerously 
certain serious diseases, which, if detected, might have 
been remedied. A latent pneumonia presenting no symp- 
tom to call our attention to the lung, is thus connected 
with some forms of sensorial impairment, as in typhoid 
fevers, and, some physicians affirm, in cholera asphyxia. 
The lobular pneumonia of children is thus rendered ob- 
scure and probably fatal; the black blood with which the 



Pain. 115 

vessels of the brain are filled on account of the pulmonary 
obstruction and defect of vital change obfuscating and 
dimming the perceptive and sensitive capacities. 

In many "congestive^' maladies, so called, the absence 
of pain is both embarrassing and ominous, as indicating 
that the very centre and source of vital susceptibility is 
oppressed, and grievously impeded in the perform.ance of 
its indispensable functions. General affections of this 
class, especially when acute or rapidly formed, present 
probably some universal aberration or morbid change of 
condition of the whole sensorial system in its central 
masses, its conducting trunks or channels, and in its peri- 
pheric expansions. But when such phenomena are local 
and more chronic, it behooves us most diligently to inquire 
into all the contingencies, and observe and record them 
with the utmost care and precision. Thus only shall we 
come to know the connection of the several points of the 
circumference with the parts of the central masses ; thus 
only ascertain the minute links of mutual dependence 
which bind together the faculties and powers of this great 
and complicated microcosm. 

The natural anaesthesia which results from the diseased 
states just referred to is in certain instances a most happy 
and desirable refuge. How infinitely distressing would 
be our sympathy with the epileptic, already a victim to 
incalculable and most burdensome evil, if nature, often a 
"cruel stepmother and hard,'' but here kind and pitiful, 
did not cover him with the ample cloak of a profound 



116 Pain. 

sleep — a true anesthesia, commencing with the earlier 
symptoms of the afflictive invasion of his terrible paroxysm, 
^^ steeping his senses in forgetfulness'^ during its continu- 
ance, and protracted for some time after its termination; 
allowing his irritated and exhausted frame an opportunity 
to recruit its forces, and resume its regularity of action 
and its calm tranquillity, so rudely broken in upon. "We 
often bless too the insensibility of syncope, an anaesthesia 
which removes its subject from pain of body, and agonies 
of mental emotion, which threaten the extinction of life or 
the overthrow of reason ; and while we wonder to find it 
as readily attendant upon pleasure also, or agreeable sen- 
sations and emotions among the very delicately organized, 
we may suggest that the conversion of pleasure into pain 
by intensity may be the true cause of this effect; and we 
shall thus be led to regard it as doubly beneficent. Besides 
this, it should be remembered that pleasure exhausts the 
system as completely and as rapidly as pain, and that in- 
sensibility may be equally and alike protective from the 
morbid influences of both. 

Still more grateful to my contemplation is the anass- 
thesia of approaching death. Most sincerely do I wish 
that this condition were as uniform as it is represented to 
be by Hoffman, and maintained by a recent ingenious 
writer in the London Quarterly Review; or even as fre- 
quent as a majority of physicians have supposed it. Its 
supervention constitutes the only true euthanasia. It is 
this which renders desirable the stroke of apoplexy, and 



Pain. 117 

robs of half its terrors the haemagastric pestilence of hot 
climates; it is this which partly reconciles us to the sud- 
den loss of friends by the more appalling attacks of con- 
gestive fevers, and of the wide wasting cholera. In these 
diseases, among others which there is not space here to 
enumerate, we often witness the painless ebbing away of 
life; the moribund being indifferent or insensible to his 
condition, and sometimes regarding it with cheerfulness, 
and even a species of gayety. 

That this anaesthesia may be produced by highly- 
wrought passion of mind we cannot doubt, and we rejoice 
to know it. The all-sustaining faith of the Christian, the 
lofty elevation of the martyr, the glorious enthusiasm of 
the patriot, may confer it. But where it is wanting — 
where sinking nature, as she becomes more and more en- 
feebled, has laid upon her a greater and greater weight of 
agony — where fear and pain assail their dying victim with 
relentless fangs — it becomes an inquiry deeply interesting 
to every humane observer whether anything can be done 
to relieve these tortures of mind and body. To the phy- 
sician this question is surely one of most anxious urgency, 
and if answered, as it must often be, in the affirmative, 
a second follows of equally grave and pressing import, 
whether he is not bound to interfere promptly and effi- 
ciently for this purpose. 

Even those who consider pain in general or in the 
abstract as protective . cannot thus regard the pains of 
death. Why then do we not more earnestly and always 
11 



118 Pain. 

seek to relieve them ? They have been thought inevita- 
ble by some, on the one hand; we now know they can 
often be put an end to^ always alleviated. On the other, 
their existence has been absolutely denied; that is, the 
appearances of suffering have been alleged to be merely 
illusions. Alas ! I am but too well assured that this is a 
mistake, and, while standing by, a sorrowing spectator, 
have often experienced infinite relief at witnessing the 
substitution of the calmness and grim tranquillity of death 
itself, for the shrieks and wri things of intolerable anguish. 
But the real reason of our usual passiveness is to be found 
in the dread that we may disturb the intellect of the 
dying; or shorten his existence by some fraction of an 
inch of his remaining span; or perhaps take from him, 
by an interference solely directed to the alleviation of 
his torments, some yet unextinguished, vaguely-imagined 
chance of possible recovery. I will not refuse their proper 
force to all these weighty considerations. Regarding 
death, with the philosopher of old, as '' to be made an 
action, not a mere suffering,^^ and maintaining that life 
must be preserved and protracted as long as there is any 
farther duty incumbent upon the living, I will only re- 
peat that, when it is palpably and indubitably clear that 
the capacity for action is irretrievably lost, and nothing 
remains in the wreck before our eyes but a frame sus- 
ceptible of torture, with an intellect oppressed by dismay 
and anguish, we are not only justified in interfering, but 



Pain. 119 

bound to interfere with such agents as may promise to 
exert in the case a beneficial influence. 

It is but recently that we have added to our therapeu- 
tical armory, and admitted into our scientific materia 
medica, a class of articles employed simply for the pur- 
pose of evading or removing pain by the production of an 
artificial and temporary insensibility. Even those who 
consider pain as physiologically and essentially protective 
in its nature and final cause would be justified in experi- 
menting with such agents in a case or cases supposably 
occurring as exceptional to their rule, in which the suffer- 
ing should seem to be a primary, idiopathic or insulated 
condition. Such an one is given us on no less authority 
than that of Fodere, who tells the story of a young man 
under his care, dying, as he alleges and affirms, of pain 
and pain only. ^^ After his death,^^ says Fodere, " I anx- 
iously explored, by means of the scalpel, all the seats of 
the pains, but could discover nothing in the muscles, the 
nerves, or the viscera ; and I was forced to believe that 
life had been destroyed by the long continuance of the 
pains.'' 

With what zealous earnestness in any succeeding and 
similar example would Fodere have administered every 
available and active anaesthetic, in order to obtain at least 
a suspension of agony, and give exhausted nature, ever 
potent in the young, an opportunity to rally her energies, 
and throw off by some emunctory the cause of such af- 
flictive disorder ! 



120 Pain. 

AnasstheticS; so called distinctively^ are as yet few in 
number; but the list is, I trust, destined to receive large 
addition, and in the variety from which we shall hereafter 
be enabled to select, we shall hope to find particular arti- 
cles specially adapted to the varying exigencies of the 
several classes of cases requiring them. We must not 
confound them with the narcotics long familiar to the 
profession, although they possess some qualities in com- 
mon. 

^^ The amount of anaesthesia from alcohol,^^ says Mr. 
Snow, ^^is apparently as great in proportion to the narco- 
tism of the nervous centres attending it, as from chloro- 
form and ether. Mr. Fergusson amputated the leg of an 
elderly man for a bad compound fracture. He was very 
drunk, exhibited but little feeling, and did not seem 
aware of what was done. When questioned a day or two 
after the operation, he said he did not remember anything 
of it, and supposed that chloroform had been administered 
to him.^' It has not been uncommon in some localities 
to allow patients to intoxicate themselves previously to 
severe operations ; but the evil consequences of the prac- 
tice have always prevented, and will and ought to pre- 
vent, its general reception. Insensibility to sufi'ering, the 
last of a long train of symptoms produced by alcohol, is 
the very first effect of a true anaesthetic, when properly 
adapted and fairly administered. Opium also, exhibited 
in very large doses, will stupify thoroughly; so will bang, 
the Cannabis Indica; and so, perhaps, will every other 



Pain. 121 

narcotic poison; but, as I have said, they will not do this 
until they have done much else that is injurious, not 
only to ^4he nervous centres/' but to the system gene- 
rally; disturbing and deranging all the functions in va- 
rious modes, and with a permanence of impression that 
does not belong to the class of which we are now speak- 
ing. I will exemplify my meaning by repeating briefly 
the circumstances of a case operated on by Dr. Jervey of 
this city, of which he published an account soon after in 
the Charleston Medical Journal. 

The subject, an old friend and patient of mine, was 
breathing through one of the patent glass vessels with 
sponge, &c., arranged by Morton, while his surgeon was 
using the knife, and, as he seemed much at his ease, I 
interrupted him by drawing it away, and asked how he 
felt. He replied readily, clearly, and quietly, that he 
suffered no pain, but was distinctly conscious of every 
movement of the knife, and appreciated perfectly every 
step of the operation. I replaced the apparatus to his 
lips, and the affair went on to its completion. When all 
was over, observing that he wept, I inquired the cause. 
His answer was that his tears were tears of gratitude and 
joy at having gone through a scene so long and deeply 
dreaded, with no more suffering than when he rose and 
dressed himself every morning. 

The article used on this occasion was ether, originally 
employed by Morton, who undoubtedly deserves to be 
looked upon as the inventor, so far as not the mere dis- 

11* 



122 Pain. 

coverer^ but he wlio reduces to practical application and 
usefulness any discovery, is the true inventor. Poor 
Wells had undoubtedly suggested, in the first instance, 
the employment of the nitrous oxide of Davy, and indeed 
obtained an experiment to be made with it in the hospi- 
tal at Boston ; but was unaccountably disconcerted with 
its failure on that occasion, and seemed to abandon the 
pursuit in despair. 

Ether, not ill named Letheon, as resembling in its 
effects those of the waters of the fabled river of the an- 
cients, which washed from the memory all traces of sor- 
row and of crime, is still preferred by many of the pro- 
fession as combining the greatest safety with a great share 
of efficiency. Chloroform, since discovered by Simpson, 
is generally selected for its greater promptness and cer- 
tainty; while some mingle the two. To these we may add 
the sulphate of carbon, aldehyde, olefiant gas, and the 
mixture of oxygen with hydrogen, the latter being sub- 
stituted for the nitrogen of atmospheric air. A few other 
products of the laboratory have been proposed, but no 
substitute for the two brought into use by Morton and 
Simpson has yet attained any position in the confidence 
of the profession. 

It is not clearly known why these agents are exclusively 
or chiefly anaesthetic when introduced into the system 
through the lung. As they are almost all of them mere 
compounds of carbon and hydrogen, some have been satis- 
fied with the chemical explanation which refers simply to 



Pain. 123 

the defect of oxygen in respiration; but there must be 
something beyond this, or we should see similar results 
from the inhalation of all the gases unfit for breathing ; 
and besides, as I have already mentioned, the very earliest 
movement in this direction was made by Wells, after 
Davy, with a compound of oxygen and nitrogen, the ex- 
hilarating gas, which indeed answers very well as an anaes- 
thetic. 

Any of the above-named agents being freely inhaled, 
the subject of the experiment falls as if apoplectic, and 
when it is perfectly successful lies without sense or mo- 
tion. The attendant phenomena vary greatly in the dif- 
ferent cases, being modified doubtless by a thousand 
contingencies as yet imperfectly observed and ill under- 
stood. Sometimes the face is flushed and turgid, and the 
eyes deeply reddened; at others the visage is pale and 
shrunken, and the lids opening the eyes are turned 
strongly upward : the teeth are clenched at first, but in 
a lower grade of insensibility the jaw falls, and foam 
gathers slowly upon the purpled lips. The breathing, 
deep at first and slow, becomes hurried, and is then in 
some suspended for a varying interval, or performed with 
no apparent movement, as in syncope. The pulse is 
strangely irregular, falling in frequency in many cases, 
but not uncommonly beating very rapidly and with a 
quick, small, sharp, but usually feeble stroke. A pro- 
found silence for the most part follows a sigh or groan; 



124 Pain. 

now and then the patient moans or even cries out^ and is 
restless and agitated. 

After a lapse of time not to be defined, and difi'ering 
greatly in different instances, the subject emerges from 
the condition described gradually but not very slowly, 
and declares himself to have been absolutely unconscious 
during the interval; the most severe, violent, rough, pro- 
tracted, and extensive surgical operation having been 
performed. Women in thousands have passed through 
all the stages of labor without knowing any of its pains. 
The cramps of cholera, the tortures of nephralgia, the 
exquisite pangs of rheumatism and of tetanus, nay, the 
agonies, far worse than death, of hydrophobia, have been 
thus suspended, and for the time at least obliterated. 

It has happened, as above related, that such anaesthesia 
has been procured by these agents without the attendant 
coma or apoplexy; sensibility to pain having been taken 
away, while the mind remained active, and will and per- 
ception both remained unaffected. 0! Si sic omnia! 
Could we always procure such influence, unalloyed with 
morbid disturbance of the function, and unattended with 
dangerous and untoward accidents, our whole race would 
hail the discovery with enthusiasm, and raise the name of 
the discoverer to more than Promethean eminence. But 
there is no earthly good without its accompanying evil ; 
and such unpleasant results have been known to follow 
the administration of these ansesthetics, including death 
itself in a few instances, that wise and skillful surgeons, 



Pain. 125 

physicians; and obstetricians are to be found who still 
refuse to employ them, and a few who denounce vehe- 
mently their employment. And, for myself, I am ready 
to confess that I look upon their exhibition in full and 
effective amount with a degree of apprehension and awe. 
The flushed, darkened, distorted visage; the blue lip, 
covered with foam ; the eyes glaring and suffused ; the 
clenched fist and closely set teeth, present not unfre- 
quently a frightful picture. Occasionally, there are vio- 
lent struggles attended with much excitement, both men- 
tal and physical, before insensibility is induced; and 
much nausea and vomiting, exhaustion and prostration, 
after it is past away. Karely, we meet with shocking 
convulsions. The sudden extinction of life, which has so 
alarmingly happened, is not easily explained. The vital 
forces succumb without an effort in a passive collapse. It 
has been further alleged — and the point deserves a care- 
ful inquiry— that the intellect is sometimes persistently 
impaired, usually with a simple fatuousness or imbecility, 
especially as a consequence of the exhibition of chloro- 
form. 

We must not forget that ansesthetic influences are pro- 
curable from all the anodynes and narcotics known, with 
opium at their head ; and that these follow, as we have 
already observed of the articles designated by that spe- 
cific appellation, much more readily from their inhalation 
than other modes of taking them. The Theriaki, the 
smokers of cannabis and tobacco, are well aware of this, 



126 Pain. 

and' it is supposed that the list of similar articles known 
in the East might be much enlarged. Indeed; a profound 
sleep; however brought on^ whether by protracted expo- 
sure to cold; by intoxication with alcohol; or any other 
intoxication; or by the somnambulism of the mesmerists, 
implies an anaesthesia relatively complete. Sleep I have 
maintained to consist in a combination of cerebral col- 
lapse and congestion; and this is a condition common as 
the result of all the several agents referred to. The pro- 
portional relation of the two elements which go to con- 
stitute sleep will vary, and so will the insensibility which 
belongs; as I suppose; to the congestion; rather than the 
collapse. A case is recorded in which a poor fellow burnt 
off his feet; while sleeping upon a comfortably warm lime- 
kiln in cold weather; having unfortunately stretched him- 
self over a crevice whence radiated a destructive heat. 
Whether owing to the breathing of carbonic acid gaS; or 
to whatever other cause;he did not know of his misfortune 
until he rose and attempted to walk. I have elsewhere 
published a similar instance in which a negro maU; found 
insensible and laid before a fire on a very cold night; had 
his feet charred by the encroachments of the fiamO; and 
awoke next morning totally unconscious of any such in- 
fiiction. The fatal congestion of cold, from which Dr. 
Solander was saved with so much difficulty; is an anaes- 
thetic condition doubtless. I fear; however; that artificial 
sleeps can never be brought on without more or less risk. 
From the form most familiar to our vicious state of so- 



Pain. 127 

ciety, that, namely, which follows vinous intoxication, up 
to the more sudden and impressive trance, coma, or apo- 
plexy from chloroform, all are liable to display on the one 
hand an intermediate transitive stage of cerebral irritation 
and excitement, and on the other an oppression tending 
to absolute collapse. In favorable cases, the respiration 
and circulation go on as in a man drunk or in the first 
stage of apoplexy; but we often observe the pulse hurried, 
or intermittent, or feeble, and the breathing irregular 
and gasping. 

The anaesthesia produced by mesmerism, so called, de- 
serves more consideration than it has received from our 
profession generally. A very large mass of testimony 
has been accumulated to prove the actual occurrence of 
the alleged insensibility during the performance of severe 
and protracted surgical operations. It is not reasonable 
to refuse inquiry into the nature and force of the evidence 
offered. In many instances, it appears to be entirely un- 
objectionable, and demands to be received. If we reject 
it, we are bound to show cause for our refusal to investi- 
gate, or for our disbelief after examination. Not to dwell 
upon miscellaneous examples of this anaesthetic agency 
set forth in the journals and elsewhere, often from sources 
of high character, and complying with all requisitions of 
scientific and logical fairness, I need only refer here to 
the publications of Dr. Elliottson, and the official reports 
of the proceedings in Calcutta, containing a history of the 
cases treated under governmental supervision by Dr. Es- 



128 Pain. 

daile. Lord Dalhousie bad placed this gentleman ^^in 
charge of a small experimental hospital^ in order that he 
might extend his investigations under the inspection of 
official visitors/' These were seven in number, medical 
men; and among them was the distinguished Professor 
O^Shaughnessy, who testifies definitely, that he "wit- 
nessed many cases operated upon by Dr. Esdaile without 
the patient's showing the slightest physical or other indi- 
cation of sufibring, either before, during, or immediately 
after the operation ;'' and that he is " perfectly satisfied 
that they did not feel pain any more than the bed they 
lay on, or the knife that cut them/' 

Now it is entirely irrelevant, in discussing such docu- 
ments from such authority, to resort to general charges, 
however well founded and sustained, of the intermingling 
of imposture and credulity presented to us during similar 
investigations. The difficulty of discriminating the real 
from the apparent — the actual truth from the falsehood 
and error by which it is surrounded — is always great; 
but the attempt at such discrimination must be made now 
or hereafter ; and, as no truth can possibly be barren of 
good results, the sooner we ascertain it, always the better. 
The mesmeric anaesthesia is affirmed to be singularly free 
from the accidents acknowledged to happen but too fre- 
quently in the other forms, and if uniformly attainable 
would seem to be a very desirable acquisition. 

Too little attention has been paid to the very important 
fact that the influence of chloroform at least, if not of the 



Pain. 129 

other articles of the new class of therapeutical applica- 
tions, is gradually progressive, accumulative in a certain 
sense, and capable of being employed through various 
stages of efficiency. In other words, a total insensibility, 
such as follows a full dose or continued and free inhala- 
tion, is unnecessary to be induced, unless as preliminary 
to the more harassing operations. Lesser degrees of suf- 
fering may be quenched or suppressed by lesser degrees 
of etherization. We may thus diminish the anguish of a 
sprain or contusion, relax the cramps which render a dis- 
location irreducible, give an opportunity for sleep or 
change of position in the tedious gnawings of rheumatic 
inflammation, oppose the recurrence of spasms in tetanus 
and spinal irritation, and relieve the exquisite pangs of 
colic and neuralgia; without carrying the exhibition of 
our heroic medicament to the production of coma or in- 
sensibility, or incurring the least risk of any kind. I 
have been , for some time in the habit of applying the 
remedy in this mode, and with the most satisfactory and 
gratifying effects; in a great variety of maladies that in 
former times afflicted me with the most painful sympathy, 
embittered by a melancholy consciousness of the feeble- 
ness of the resources of our art as shown by its impotency 
to relieve them. 

Farther, we must not omit to notice the alleged pro- 
duction of a local anassthesia, or insensibility confined to 
a part under various contingencies. The celebrated Dr. 
Arnott proposes, as a topical anaesthetic entirely safe and 
12 



130 Pain. 

manageable, the effect of congelation. A freezing mix- 
ture of snow and salt is applied, which soon suspends all 
sensibility, whether natural or abnormal; putting an end 
to the suffering of whatever local disease, and permitting 
all modes of operation to be performed without the con- 
sciousness of the patient. Nor does the freezing hinder 
the subsequent healing of the wound, or return to health 
of the part, in the usual time and manner. 

So also, we are told by Nunnely, Roux, and others, the 
topical application of chloroform, ether, aldehyde, and the 
^^ Dutch liquid,^' persisted in with perseverance, will be- 
numb the part of the surface to which it is made, whether 
sound, diseased, or wounded. The article may either be 
applied by immersion in it, or by means of lint, sponge, 
or cameFs hair pencil laid upon it, or assiduously brushed 
over it, for five minutes to half an hour. Even the mus- 
cles beneath the surfaces thus treated are said to undergo 
a partial and temporary paralysis. 

These facts open a curious field for speculation. The 
agents of which we are speaking differ remarkably in 
their influences upon the system according to the various 
modes in which they are offered to it or administered. 
When taken into the stomach, they stimulate and excite. 
Thus employed we may obtain from them relief of almost 
all pains seated in the digestive tube, colics and other 
constrictive spasmodic affections, gastralgias and enteral- 
gias, when they are not associated with inflammation. 
They act here probably as carminatives and narcotics, 



Pain. 131 

and scarcely exert any of their specific tendencies sucli as 
they show upon inhalation. In the latter mode of ad- 
mi nistration, they are supposed to combine much more 
freely and intimately with the blood. The respiration of 
the etherized is said to yield a far larger amount of car- 
bonic acid than in the normal state, and yet the circulating 
mass is imperfectly organized and still loaded with carbon, 
and black, and somewhat indisposed to coagulate. The 
veins are said to have contained air in some of the sub- 
jects examined after death from chloroform. 

Now, if this condition of the air expired and the blood 
be such as is met with when the common compounds of 
carbon and hydrogen are taken into the lungs, it is not 
reasonable to imagine that we should find the same con- 
ditions present in the anaesthesia from nitrous oxide, or 
from the compound of oxygen with hydrogen ; but if not, 
then it is clear that these phenomena are not explanatory 
of the symptoms present. 

In the local application of these agents, their influence 
would appear to be exerted directly upon the nervous 
expansions, and perhaps also upon the blood in the tis- 
sues. If, as Matteucci teaches, the nervous power in any 
part be generated by and through the vital changes in the 
tissues of the part, and if, as we believe, these changes 
depend upon the relative affinities of the blood and the 
tissues, the generation of nervous power must cease when 
the blood is acted upon by these fluids, by reason of the 
check given to such reciprocal changes; and hence must 



132 Pain. 

result loss of sensation, perceptivity, and motive con- 
tractility. 

In conclusion, I feel it incumbent on me to guard my- 
self against misapprehension. I have made no remarks 
intended to apply to — I have said nothing of — the grand 
topic of the moral uses of pain. Let me now clearly 
express my faith on this head. Love, aga/pe, benevolence, 
the great principle of charity, love can only ^^be made 
perfect through suffering.^^ Without suffering there could 
be no sympathies; and all the finer and more sacred of 
human ties would cease to exist. Without suffering, 
courage must be unknown, that quality which even in its 
lowest and most brutal manifestations commands some 
portion of respect and regard, and, when ennobled by in- 
tellect, refinement, and purity of motive, wins from us the 
loftiest admiration. Hence it is that our loving, good, 
and wise Father inflicts pain upon his children; and 
hence, they become less unworthy of their sublime rela- 
tionship with him who marks his omnipotence and omni- 
science by the uniformity with which, in all time and 
throughout all eternity. He 

''From seeming evil still educes good.'* 



Snt el lection. 



12* 



INTELLECTION. 



THE higher orders of created beings are distinguished 
by the possession of certain faculties, which, if not 
exclusively belonging to animal life, are of very doubtful 
existence in the vegetable world. Sensation and voluntary 
motion, implying conscious individuality, are connected 
with the presence of a particular tissue or structure which 
we call the Nervous System, and which^ gradually more 
and mere fully developed, and becoming more and more 
complicated, is offered to our contemplation in its most 
varied and exquisite arrangements, in the highest and 
most perfect of all animals. It is here that man enjoys 
his peculiar attributes; by virtue of his superiority in this 
portion of his organism, he reigns supreme over all nature. 
Perception, thought, and action, in him immeasurably of 
loftier character than in all other creatures, are thus ele- 



136 Intellection. 

vated by the infinite delicacy of the mechanism through 
which they are exerted : and yet this very delicacy, and 
the wide complication by which the human frame is ren- 
dered so full of varied capacities for action and enjoyment, 
serve also to admit morbid as well as normal impulses; to 
receive impressions of injurious and destructive influence 
as well as those which are kindly and favorable, and thus 
become equally ready and expanded inlets of disease. 

The nervous system in man, and in animals resembling 
him, consists of a generating and conducting apparatus; 
a receiving centre, and communicating fibres. It gene- 
rates the VIS nervosa — nervous force, nervous power — an 
expression of an unknown faculty, which some regard as 
a fluid — an imponderable — of which heat and magnetism 
may be considered analogues. Many, indeed, believe it 
to be as closely related to them as they are to light and 
electricity ; and, as some have urged plausible and inge- 
nious reasons for the opinion that all these agents are in 
essence and substance absolutely identical, so there are not 
a few who unhesitatingly pronounce the nervous force to 
be nothing but the galvanic fluid, peculiarly modified by 
its source and mode of production. 

It is impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, 
to speak of this power or faculty otherwise than by the 
use of hypothetical phrases; and, in the great diversity of 
views concerning its nature and origin, it is difficult to 
avoid falling into positive contradictions in the attempt to 
develop its functions, and the modes of their performance. 



Intellection. 137 

The apparatus to which it pertains is built up of numerous 
parts, so conjoined as to form a whole, of which the seve- 
ral structures composing it exercise different offices. To 
it, we owe the correspondence of the vital movements 
which carry on our individual existence ; by it, we are 
brought into conscious relations with external nature. Its 
circumference, or peripheral portion, receives impressions 
made from without, in many diverse modes, some of 
which are transferred to the interior parts, and there acted 
on, or retained. Such portions as not only receive im- 
pressions and retain them, but generate force, are called 
centres ; those which conduct or communicate impulses, 
are nerves. The matter of which it is constituted is of 
two kinds — one of which predominates in the centres; the 
other is found in the nerves : the former is darker-colored, 
gray, or cineritious; the latter is white. The centres are 
the brain, the spinal marrow, and the ganglions. The 
gray neurine or nervous matter is vesicular ; the white is 
tubular. When the latter is prolonged and enclosed in 
a sheath, of a peculiar but delicate membranous tissue, it 
becomes a nerve. The offices of the nerve are various. 
Upon it, at its extremity, or, perhaps, even in some part 
of its course or the extent that lies between its central 
extremity and the organ or surface in or upon which it 
expands and loses itself, an impression is made, we know 
not how; in a like inconceivable manner it is conveyed 
by it to the centre with which it is connected. When 
this is the brain^ it gives rise to what we call a sensation, 



138 Intellection. 

which is merely the consciousness of an impression; the 
very word implying the existence of a psychical principle. 
This thinking or intelligent principle, taking cognizance 
of the impression, often acts upon it by transmitting a 
volition through a nerve to a voluntary muscle. If the 
nerve be not connected with the brain, but with one of 
the ganglionic centres, or the spinal marrow, the impres- 
sion it conveys may not become a sensation, but gives rise 
to the several movements, involuntary or only partially 
voluntary, upon which depend the several vital functions. 
These offices of nerves have been closely studied of late, 
and are the themes of much hypothetical but warm dis- 
cussion; and professional ears are becoming familiar with 
the terms afferent and efferent, incident and reflex, mo- 
tory and excito-motory, and sensori-volitional, all of which 
express some doctrine, opinion, or theory, in reference to 
nervous action. 

Sensation, and its absolute correlative, intellection, are 
by all referred to the brain, which Solly and others re- 
gard as a large ganglion or collection of ganglions. Its 
duplex formation has not been sufficiently considered 
until of late; Holland and Wigan, in calling our atten- 
tion to it, have suggested numerous influences of weighty 
import relative to our mental actions. It is itself entirely 
insensible, and no means are known of making a direct 
impression upon it, that shall awaken consciousness ; such 
impressions reach it only through and by means of its 
nerves — unless we qualify the assertion as follows. 



Intellection. 139 

Sensations are not identical or simple acts of conscious- 
ness, but require to be spoken of as greatly varied. 

It is usual to divide them into common and specific. 
Common sensibility resides in the peripheral extremity of 
most nerves — perhaps not of all — and in every part of the 
course of some nerves. To it is assigned, in ordinary 
language, the recognition of those qualities of bodies 
which are amenable to the touch, hardness, softness, &c. ; 
the condition of muscular tension, of which, in the 
healthy state, we are always precisely conscious, and thus 
able to retain our position and regulate our movements ; 
and, lastly, of temperature. But hardness, heat, and 
weight are qualities as obviously different in themselves, 
and quite as separable in the mind, as form, taste, and 
color. Nerves consist of many fibres, of which we know 
that some which are merely motory are bound up with 
some that are sensitive: it is not proved that any one 
fibre is capable of transmitting more than one class of 
sensations, any more than it can be at the same time 
motory and sensitive. Specific sensation resides in limited 
parts, and belongs to special organs, which are exquisitely 
adapted to its performance. This is true in a peculiar 
and emphatic way of three of the senses. Now these 
three, it is affirmed, by the most recent and authoritative 
investigators, are not performed by nerves; regarding a 
nerve as it is always defined, as a thread or bundle of 
threads of white tubular neurine invested in its neurilemma 
or white fibrous membrane. The retina, the neurine ex- 



140 Intellection. 

panded upon the nostrils for the perception of odors and 
flavors, and that which is distributed in the recesses of 
the ear, are, as we are told, processes of true cerebral 
matter, consisting of gray neurine; and thus the special 
senses of sight, smell, and hearing are exercised directly 
by the brain, which, in these portions, or processes, must 
therefore be endowed with powers entirely new. 

It has been assumed that the generation of nervous 
force is confined to the gray matter of the neurine, but 
there are serious difficulties in the way of this exclusive 
doctrine. Matteucci found it necessary to admit a second 
source, and contends that it is also ^^ generated in the mus- 
cular tissues, carried in a direct current by the nervous 
cords to the brain, and sent in an inverse current from 
the brain to the muscles.^^ We have here a suggestion 
of diversity in the nature of nervous forces ; the one mo- 
tory, generated by the muscular action or by the nutritive 
actions going on in muscular tissues; the other sensitive, 
and generated in the nervous centres. But, as I have 
above intimated, there would seem to be yet other modi- 
fications of the nervous force, or faculties, as appears in 
the distinction of specific from common sensibility, and of 
specific sensations from each other; and, perhaps, even 
more characteristically displayed in the act of volition, and 
in the performance of other purely intellectual functions, 
as comparison, memory, imagination. 

I find this hypothesis of various sources of diversified 
forms of memory power a very convenient, if not an ab- 



Intellection. 141 

solutely necessary one, for the explanation of certain 
morbid phenomena, unaccounted for by the ordinary 
methods of philosophizing. For instance, there are many 
parts and tissues entirely insensitive in the normal state, 
which occasionally become the seats of exquisite sensi- 
bility; and others in which certain known changes, some 
of which are purely physical, and others as purely intel- 
lective, generate an entirely new form of sensitiveness, a 
new mode, indeed, of special sensation. 

Of the first, we find our readiest example in the in- 
flammation and the neuralgia of serous and fibrous tissues, 
and insensible parenchymata. I am aware that it is usual 
to speak of these as mere exaltations of the common 
nervous capacity of the part affected, but nothing can be 
more obviously insufficient than this coarse view of the 
facts. We had better at once adopt the doctrine of Cuvier, 
that there is but one mode of nervous susceptibility, of 
which touch is the basis; all the others being mere en- 
hancements of it in degree through successive stages up 
to the exquisite delicacy of the optic nerve, by which even 
the undulations of light are felt. If such mere enhance- 
ment — a plus degree — constitutes the morbid sensitive- 
ness which gives rise to new consciousness, referred to 
parts originally unconscious, it must be greatest — cseteris 
paribus — in structures originally most sensitive; that is, 
if inflammation and neuralgia merely increase, by develop- 
ment, an obscure or obtuse sensitiveness in callous tissues, 
they should always, in equal degrees, heighten the sensi- 
13 



142 Intellection. 

bility of sensitive tissues. But it is well known that 
there is no such law, and that these morbid conditions 
are productive of the highest degrees of pain in parts and 
tissues normally unconscious of any form of sensation. In 
sensitive parts, too, this enhancement should be the same 
in kind; when superinduced upon the natural suscepti- 
bilities; but neither is this the observed rule. The kid- 
ney, the pleura, the joints, and the intestines, are seats 
often of most atrocious pain, not excelled, surely, by that 
of organs normally most sensitive ; and these latter do not 
suffer by the augmentation of their natural sensations 
into painful intensity, but by the origination of modes of 
feeling perfectly new. It would be idle to maintain, for 
example, that the agony of cramp, or spasm, is a mere 
aggravation of the consciousness of muscular tension; 
or the itching of psora and herpes a mere increase of the 
common sensibility of the skin as an organ of touch, for 
it never occurs with great severity in the parts in which 
touch is best developed; or that the burning of erysi- 
pelas is a mere hyper-aesthesis of the sense of temperature, 
for it is quite beyond the apprehension of far higher de- 
grees of heat applied in any other mode. 

Secondly; if we consider the remarkable phenomena of 
sexual sensitiveness, we shall find it manifested by changes 
corresponding with the age and growth of the individual ; 
and we shall experience much difficulty in deciding 
whether the local changes are causes or effects of the 
awakening of a nervous force previously unfelt and un- 



Intellection. 143 

known — may we not truly say previously non-existent? 
We shall observe also the astonishing rapidity of its 
development by mental action^ a visual impression, a 
casual thought, a transient imagination; an aroused remi- 
niscence. 

Circulation^ nutrition, the generation of animal heat, 
the performance of motion, secretion, and excretion, are all 
impaired by the lesion of a nerve, or by any mechanical 
impediment to its conducting action between its peripheral 
and central extremities. When a nerve is laid bare, and 
an impression made upon it, it undergoes no visible nor 
cognizable change ; yet it transmits such impression with 
inconceivable rapidity, instantaneously, as it would seem. 
If a motory nerve, contraction takes place, instantly, in 
the muscle with which it is connected ; if sensitive, pain 
is immediately felt. Hence, it is inferred by Todd and 
other modern physiologists, arguing from the rapidity of 
this propagation or conduction, that a molecular change 
must take place in the nerve, and that the action of the 
stimulus applied is to excite ^^a state of polarity;^' and 
Todd proposes to denote this nervous power by the term 
"polar force.'^ Philosophers tell us that "a body is 
thrown into a state of polarity when the particles of 
which it is composed exert different physical properties on 
their opposite sides.^^ It is acknowledged by all that the 
change thus vaguely designated is cognizable no otherwise 
than by its ultimate results. The analogy with the tele- 
graphic transmission of the electric current, through or 



144 Intellection. 

along a metallic wire, is obviously presented and much 
dwelt on; yet it is nothing more than an undefined 
analogy ; for, notwithstanding the alleged points of simi- 
larity between the nervous fluid and galvanism, upon 
which so much stress has been laid by Prevost and Du- 
mas, Smee and others, Matteucci and Todd have shown 
abundant reason to deny their identity. 

As the brain, and the nerves which belong to it, are the 
undisputed organs of sensation, volition, and voluntary 
motion, so the spinal cord, including the medulla oblon- 
gata and its nerves, are the originators or instruments of 
the involuntary or mixed movements upon which organic 
life depends. Yet motive power or contractility, in the 
abstract, is by no means derived from the sensorial sys- 
tem ; it belongs to and resides in muscular fibre, whose 
contractions — the closer approach of the primary cells of 
which it consists — may go on, when it is denuded of all 
nervous connection. The nervous force, however, is the 
true and proper excitant and the exclusive regulator of 
muscular contraction. Even the unstriped muscular 
fibres of the intestine, like the striped fibres of the heart, 
though free from the direct control of volition, are amena- 
ble to many influences emanating from the psychical 
principle, and readily affected by mental emotion. Indeed, 
mere attention will often act upon them without the in- 
tervention of any emotion. 

It is a curious question, and its solution might afford 
us some valuable inferences pathologically, whether in the 



Intellection. 145 

performance of its varied and important functions, the 
nervous system acts as a whole, or by virtue of the defi- 
nite capacities and susceptibilities of its several parts. 
The chemical and histological composition and arrange- 
ment of its substance seem everywhere the same, yet it 
is almost impossible to doubt that there is a fundamental 
difference, both in the arrangement of the neurine, and 
the nature of the nervous power in the various contingen- 
cies in which we appreciate its influence ; in the gland, 
which secretes, and the duct which conveys the product 
of secretion ; in the vessel which nourishes, and the fibre 
which contracts obediently to volition. Surely the varied 
modes of sensation also imply distinct modes and powers 
of local nervous action. Consider the singular sensation 
which we call ^*' tickling'^ — itself on the very verge of 
morbidity, and scarcely ever occurring normally ; doubtful 
whether pleasant or painful; and, so far as we know, 
effecting no purpose in the animal economy; confined to 
limited portions of the surface, varying in different indi- 
viduals; closely connected with certain states of mind, 
and promptly increased both in extent and intensity by 
mental attention. Except on the sole of the foot, and 
the exception is a remarkable and inexplicable fact, for it 
is itself not uniform, the sensation is not very likely to 
be excited by the subject himself, and there it is generally 
irritable to the most accidental touch. Its highest de- 
grees are aroused by the gentlest tactile impressions, and 
the nerves which are susceptible to it — are they of a sepa- 

13* 



146 Intellection. 

rate or distinguishable class? — are perhaps the most pow- 
erful of all excito-motors. No paralysis, perhaps, which 
is consistent with the living condition, is so profound as 
to resist it; and a feather passed over the sole of the foot 
will often arouse in the hemiplegic or paraplegic the most 
violent, involuntary, and sometimes unconscious con- 
tractions. 

Observe also the phenomena of blushing, equally in- 
voluntary, but simply emotional; see how various the 
degree of liability to it, the intensity of it, and the extent 
over which it spreads. If '^ shame ivitliout guilt j^ be indeed 
a great mystery of our nature, surely the physical effect 
of the mental emotion is nearly or quite as mysterious. 
The blush of shame is a curious result of the determina- 
tion of a special nervous action upon the minute vessels 
of the face, neck, bosom, arms, and head; a similar flush 
may arise also under the influence of other emotions be- 
sides shame. It is remarked, by Laycock, that the sur- 
face supplied by these very nerves and vessels is specially 
liable to erysipelatous inflammation. The control of spe- 
cial nervous sensibility over vessels is shown in the intu- 
mescence of erectile tissues ; but it is merely an emotional 
and by no means a volitional influence which is thus 
exercised. 

If Piorry be right, we have a curious instance in the 
spleen, of morbid erection or expansion of tissue during 
the paroxysm of an intermittent fever, which is as unac- 
countably as promptly put an end to by the remedial 



Intellection. 147 

effect of quinine; and, as Corrigan and Gouraud assert, 
by ether and other agents. 

Similar influences, alike peculiar and distinct, yet 
having an obvious relation to the psychical principle, the 
seat of sensation and intellection, are exerted by the 
nerves upon glands and ducts. We weep from many 
emotions of mind ; the sight or imagination of sapid food 
will bring on a free flow of saliva; the presence or recol- 
lection of the infant will cause the production and escape 
of milk from ^^ the sacred fountains that nourish the 
human race.^^ 

Still more extraordinary is the effect upon the color of 
the hair of the condition of the physical principle, and 
its organ the brain. I have elsewhere announced my 
disbelief of the miraculous stories of a change from black 
to gray being wrought suddenly by mental distress or 
anxiety. But there are known facts which are sufficiently 
well attested of this result being brought about within 
comparatively brief periods of time. Condamine gives us 
the affecting narrative of a young Frenchwoman, Madame 
Grodin, who, descending the river Amazon in an open 
boat, with seven persons, had the misfortune to be 
wrecked. She saw her companions perish one by, one, 
and was left alone in the wilderness ; but through infinite 
perils and labors at last reached a settlement, her hair 
having turned white. A distinguished surgeon assures 
me that a particular lock of his hair always grows white 
when he is specially annoyed with care for any time; 



148 Intellection. 

resuming its natural brown hue gradually after this passes 
away. 

Nice anatomical investigation and physiological ex- 
periment have assigned to different portions of the great 
cerebro-spinal axis special and absolute dominion over 
various portions of the body through the nerves distributed 
to them. Thus we find that in the medulla oblongata 
resides the power that governs the respiratory movements. 
This portion of the encephalon is also the centre of action 
in the movements of deglutition : these two functions re- 
quiring to be coordinate, and so regulated that they shall 
not interfere. It is the centre too of those actions which 
are influenced by mental emotion. Now, by collating 
these views, we account for many interesting facts : every 
one has felt how much his breathing is disturbed in emo- 
tional excitement, as by anger; hence, the sobbing of 
grief, and the globus of hysteria — the swelling of the 
throat in poor old Lear, 

" Pray you, undo this button : thank you, sir !" 

It is not my purpose to enter into an investigation of 
the doctrine of phrenology, so clearly founded in well- 
asceTtained truth, but pressed by their advocates into so 
many extremes of error ; yet I cannot avoid referring to 
the numerous proofs of the localization of certain powers 
and faculties. Solly and Noble most ably maintain the 
opinion, now almost universally received, that the convo- 
lutions of the brain are the means employed by nature for 



Intellection. 149 

condensing, or packing, into the smallest space, the 
greatest amount of active and generating — as distinct 
from conducting — cerebral substance. Even Todd, while 
showing impressively the weakness of the prevailing sys- 
tem of phrenology, lays it down as ^^a well-proved fact 
that the complexity of the convolutions in the animal 
scale is in the direct ratio with the advance of intelli- 
gence.'^ These folds of vesicular matter are now regarded 
as the true instruments of perception, memory, judgment, 
and imagination. The white fibres that conduct from 
them are so exactly identical in structure and composi- 
tion with nerve, that we might suppose them to possess 
similar endowments, sensitive and motory : but it is not 
so. I have already said they are absolutely insensible. 
Neither mechanical injury nor even — as Matteucci tells 
us — the galvanic current produces upon or through them 
any sensible efiect, neither pain nor disturbance of mo- 
tion. 

There seems to me, however, some effort necessary to 
be satisfied with the proofs of the localization of the will 
in the corpora striata (Todd); the ^^ reception of sensitive 
impressions in the optic thalami and the crus cerebri' 
(idem); and "the conversion into sensations of light, 
color, form, &c., of the impressions received by the retina 
in the tubercula quadrigemina (Solly).'' 

The cerebellum, according to Gall, Larrey, and Combe, 
is the seat of sexual impulses; according to Flourens, 
therein resides the power of co-ordinating the voluntary 



150 Intellection. 

movements which originate in other parts of ^^ the cerebral 
centre/^ The former doctrine is highly probable^ although 
assailed with some opposing facts difficult to resist or 
explain away. The latter I regard as fully proved by the 
experiments of Flourens^ Rolando^ Longet^ and others. 
Animals deprived of the organ move^ and see, and feel; 
they cannot stand still, and in walking they totter and 
stagger from side to side. ^^ Volition and sensation re- 
main; the power of executing movements remains; but 
that of arranging these movements into regular and com- 
bined action is lost.^^ 

As the brain is the exclusive seat of intellection, we 
must look to its lesions, its diseases, its derangements, 
both of function and structure, primary and sympathetic, 
in all impairments and perversions of the mental and 
moral faculties. Yet we shall find these defects and dis- 
orders inextricably interwoven with those of sensation 
and even of motion. The nervous system is, after all its 
subdivision into organs, one great whole; of which the 
parts are so closely connected each with every other, that 
it is absolutely impossible to insulate any one. This is, 
perhaps, most strikingly observable in examples of con- 
genital deformity, which, when they are of defect, imply- 
ing whatever subtraction from the totality of this compli- 
cated structure, are apt to involve all the rest of the 
system, not excepting the encephalon itself. The re- 
ceived maxim is almost literally true : " Kiliil in intel- 
lectu quod non prius in sensuJ^ The mind is dependent 



Intellection. 151 

on the senseS; and it would be difficult to conceive of any 
process of thought in a subject whose senses were all 
wanting. The imagination almost loses itself in the 
effort to realize the condition of the unhappy creatures^ 
born, like Laura Bridgman, blind at once and deaf; and 
nothing less than the ingenious and persevering philan- 
thropy of a Howe could have prevailed over the sullen 
darkness in which such a soul is wrapped. 

Impairment of motivity, paralysis, is very rarely free 
from connection with more or less apparent imbecility of 
mind, feebleness of judgment, or vacillation of will, or 
irritability of temper, and easy excitement of emotion. 
Convulsions, if frequently repeated, can hardly fail to 
produce injurious influences upon the thinking faculty; 
although we have, as to epileptics, some very impressive 
examples, Caesar and Mahomet among them, recorded to 
the contrary. Pain itself, when intense or long pro- 
tracted, will not only prostrate the body, but overthrow 
the mind. Indeed, of many diseases of various organs 
and portions of the body, even when not painful, we have 
come to know that they readily involve or connect them- 
selves with aberrations of mind in various modes. Simple 
dyspepsia gives rise to many hallucinations, illusions of 
the senses, eccentric and perverted trains of thought and 
feeling, and even suicidal mania. Many fevers are ush- 
ered in by delirium. Some poisons in daily use produce 
the strange yet familiar madness which is pre-eminently 



152 Intellection. 

poisoning, intoxication ; and all our anaesthetics present, 
though transiently, a similar effect. 

It is indeed very often exceedingly difficult to draw the 
line at which intellection ceases to be normal, or to define 
what is properly meant by aberration of mind. G-enius 
is, in its ordinary modes of conception and expression, so 
far removed from the common-place habits of men that 
its relations to insanity are actually proverbial. 

<< Great wit to madness closely is allied." 
"Nullum ingenium sine mixtura dementiee." 

Nay, what is stranger still, the profound cogitations of 
science, whether abstract or practical, result in similar 
mental disorder. Enthusiasm of all kinds, without which 
true greatness of character is never achieved, is likewise 
dangerous as pressing us forward to the very verge of 
lunacy; and the contrasted state of indifference met with 
in the indolent and phlegmatic often settles down, in its 
tui'n, into morbid melancholy, stolid apathy, or intense 
disgust of life. 

The brain attains its full physical perfection in the 
morning of our days. In some it has ceased to grow after 
sixteen years of age ; in others, an increase of the size of 
the head has been observed to continue until near thirty. 
How long it remains unchanged is not easily known; but 
no very special or definite alteration is detected usually 
before the sixtieth year. The shape of the cranium does 
not remain permanently the same, however; casts taken 



Intellection. 153 

from the head at different times present somewhat dif- 
ferent forms. From this fact, which I regard as estab- 
lished, phrenologists have derived inferences as to the 
craniological manifestations, which seem to me unfounded 
and untenable. It is not only unproved that the shape 
and size of the cranium are exactly correspondent with 
the shape and size of the solid contents, but it is proved 
that the solid encephalon is variable in bulk relevantly 
also to the fluids contained in the same cavity. The 
cerebro-spinal fluid which bathes the brain is found in 
greater quantity in advancing life than in youth or man- 
hood. The skull of the child contains little of it. Atrophy 
of the brain, in whatever degree, gives rise to a propor- 
tional increase of it. Foville says that the cerebral fat 
keeps pace in quantity with the fat elsewhere; whence 
we might expect, if the craniologists are right, that cor- 
pulent men should have large heads, on account of their 
large and corpulent brains. But would such brains be 
capable of better, stronger, or higher intellection on ac- 
count of their size ? ^^ Fat paunches/^ says Shakspeare, 
^^ make lean pates.^' 

Atrophy of the brain in old age is shown by many and 
familiar tokens. The impairment of memory, the gossip- 
ing garrulity, the egotism, the petulance, the exacting 
dogmatism, the unreasoning obstinacy, which characterize 
the extreme decline of life, and correspond with so much 
lamentable physical decay, are not all of them mere nega- 
tions. If all the faculties were equally affected, that is, 
14 



154 Intellection. 

if all parts of the cerebral organism were alike subject to 
the defective nutrition and defective energy of old age, it 
would be far less an evil than it is. 

A similar state of the brain, ^^an atrophy of the convo- 
lutions over the anterior lobeS; marked by the greater 
width of the sulci/^ is affirmed by Dr. Reid to be ^^fre- 
quently remarked in the brains of people in the prime of 
life, who had been for some time addicted to excessive 
intemperance in ardent spirits.' ' 

It is probable that, in all these instances, the proper 
balance of energy of faculties is lost in the contrasted 
conditions of the several portions of the cerebral mass, 
which are not all equally or alike affected. It may be 
that certain parts shall undergo not a merely relative, but 
an absolute increase of determination. When old men 
recover their powers of vision or of hearing, we must 
ascribe it to a renewal of the energy of the parts of the 
cineritious matter in which these senses reside. 

The opposite condition of the brain, hypertrophy, is 
not often clearly diagnosed. It is probable that it has 
been occasionally mistaken for hydrocephalus, as, like 
that disease, it is exclusively or almost exclusively confined 
to childhood. There are, it is true, several cases related 
in the books of adult hypertrophy ; but, with Meriadec 
Laennec, who relates five of them, I think they are rather 
instances of inflammatory turgescence. In general, it is 
the hemispheres that undergo such morbid enlargement. 
In children, its development is coincident with, er pro- 



Intellection. 155 

ductive of remarkable precocity, always observed with 
exultation, yet always to be dreaded. 

I am not sure wbether we should consider here certain 
forms of mental aberration as among the effects of per- 
verted nutrition, or rather as belonging to modifications 
of circulation in the brain. Delirium tremens has been 
placed under this head by some pathologists ; but there are 
certain facts in regard to it that dispose me to look upon 
it as a peculiar condition of a neuropathic character — 
properly speaking, of the neurine itself, probably of the 
gray matter of the convolutions, and of the medulla ob- 
longata. Perceptions are all wrong during this violent 
erethism, judgment entirely confused, memory embar- 
rassed and overturned, emotions passing perpetually over 
the mind like dark clouds over a stormy sky, enveloped 
in a gloom deeper than that of the shadow of death. 
These vehement disturbances are all calmed and subdued 
by a few hours of sleep, all relieved by the tranquilizing 
influences of opium. The pulse, so innumerably rapid, 
resumes its measured rhythm ; the muscles, so agitated by 
paralysis and convulsion, are at rest, and once more sub- 
ject to the will. These therapeutical phenomena oppose 
themselves to the supposition of a retarded circulation 
from the less vital fluidity of the blood on the one hand, 
and on the other to a morbid polarity of the spinal cord, 
which, if Todd is right, should be exaggerated, not di- 
minished, by opiates. It is indeed affirmed that delirium 
tremens is uniformly associated with a deficient determi- 



156 Intellection. 

nation of blood to the brain or of sanguineous circulation 
in the vessels of that organ, and that the organ, in sub- 
jects of this affection, is always pale and ansemic. I am 
not yet, however, altogether satisfied that this is the uni- 
form, or even the general fact. 

There can be little doubt that certain modes of anaemia, 
or poverty of blood, produce derangement of mind. Here 
it is natural to expect that we shall find imbecility, 
fatuity, vacillation of purpose, and great mobility, all 
which are combined in some of the attacks of chlorotic 
hysteria. But these are not owing usually to anaemia 
alone. Hyperaemia, or vascular turgescence of the brain, 
is coincident with numerous varieties of derangement; 
but neither am I satisfied to refer these any more than 
the last class exclusively to plus or minus amounts of 
blood in the cerebral vessels. The contingencies which 
accompany these states are, I think, much more likely to 
be the actual causative sources of the whole series of 
effects. The vital relation of the neurine to the blood 
must have undergone a change, and in that change we 
shall find, when we are able to trace it, I am confident, 
the first link in the morbid chain of results. I am ready 
to acknowledge, however, that the mere pressure arising 
from congestion, whether active or passive, is a very pro- 
bable source of evil. The delirium of dreaming — for what 
else is dreaming than a sort of normal form of mental 
wandering? — and the delirium of the transition state 
between sleeping and waking, may be taken as examples 



Intellection. 157 

of the effect of congestion. A dream carried out into 
action would be admitted by all to exhibit a condition of 
absolute insanity. We may define delirium, if we can 
define any one of these states so nearly related to each 
other, as indeed a sort of transient insanity ; presenting 
to it the same analogy as the flush of fever to cutaneous 
inflammation of the face, or weeping to ophthalmia. The 
transition state of waking is worthy of careful observa- 
tion. In some men, it is too short for a remark; in others, 
it is more protracted, and always attended with painful con- 
fusion of ideas. This is apt to be increased on waking 
from the first sleep after a great event has happened to 
us, or some great change has taken place in our fortunes. 
' It is indeed a condition of transient insanity, in which 
terrible deeds have been performed. I have never read 
without a feeling of sympathetic dread and horror the 
trial of Nicholson for the murder of his master and mis- 
tress. He declared steadily, and I am persuaded truly, 
that the terrible act, causeless and motiveless as it seemed 
to be, was perpetrated during the indescribable mental 
confusion which clouded his faculties in passing from 
sleep to waking. Epilepsy frequently makes its attack 
upon its unfortunate subjects in this transition state; 
some are assailed by the convulsion on going to sleep, 
others on emerging from it. A corresponding condition 
of the brain is often noticeable in the mesmerised, and 
doubtless from the same cause, congestion, with its con- 
comitants. I have seen it attended with convulsions; 

14'^ 



158 Intellection. 

there is occasionally a partial ecstasy or trance. ^^Arti- 
ficial somnambulism/' says Eschenmeyer, the mesmerist, 
^^ would, if permanent, be a peculiar lunacy. '^ 

All the anaesthetics as yet discovered produce a similar 
wandering of mind previous to the advent of the soporose 
congestion of insensibility; in most cases, a sort of inebri- 
ation, such as is noticed under the excitement of nitrous 
oxide and sulphuric ether — cheerful and gay; at others, a 
furious violence ; at others, a doleful wailing, anxious op- 
pression of spirits. It is curious to inquire whether the 
variations of influence are owing to special properties in 
the agent; or to the particular portion of the encephalon 
affected; or to something in the condition of the subject 
at the time of being acted on. Of the first we have some • 
apparent examples, such as has been already referred to 
in the laughing gas of Sir Humphrey Davy. I have seen 
a case or two of poisoning by the seeds of the stramonium, 
in which the children were urged on to inextinguishable 
laughter, presenting under the circumstances a contrast 
truly dolorous. The haschisch prepared from the Canna- 
bis Indica is said to excite in the disordered mind images 
of pleasure, and, probably from its determination to the 
cerebellum, always mingled with voluptuous delight. 
But, in general, the condition of the individual at the 
moment of intoxication seems to give the peculiar direc- 
tion which the course of thought is to take. This is ob- 
servable even in the use of the nitrous oxide, when the 
example of the first inhaler seems to lead those who come 



Intellection. 159 

after him, and all dance^ or fight, or kiss, or become noisy 
and eloquent. 

Ordinary alcoholic inebriation pursues a channel marked 
out very much by the habit or character of the individu- 
als; some of whom are always gay; others maudlin and 
sullen; and others quarrelsome and desperate. 

What is the nature of these cases? Liebig supposes 
an intimate mixture of the particles of the opium, &c., 
with the cerebral substance; but, if this be true, as it pro- 
bably is, we are not any nearer an explanation of the 
phenomena. Chemists farther suggest an inordinately 
rapid combustion of certain component parts of the neu- 
rine of the encephalon; the fat a compound of carbon and 
hydrogen, like most inebriating substances, and the plios- 
jpJiorus that peculiar element upon the presence and pro- 
portions of which in the brain probably depend many of 
the changes which constitute mental action, or which are, 
to say the least, coincident with mental action. In idiot 
brains, it is said to be relatively deficient; in amentia, 
mere defect of intellectual action, it is said also to be 
wanting; while in the brains of violent maniacs it is too 
abundant. Cabanis saw, in some cases of the latter kind, 
actual phosphorescence in the cerebral mass. But, if it is 
thus burnt too fast in intoxication, in delirium, and in 
mania, whence is the superabundant supply derived in 
protracted cases ? The amentia of old age seems to de- 
pend upon positive atrophy, the supply of phosphorus and 
perhaps of all other combustible matters failing; for 



160 Intellection. 

there cannot be a doubt that the production and elimina- 
tion of phosphoric acid, and the compounds formed by it, 
are proportioned to the activity of thought. If the imbe- 
cility of old age were confined to the intellectual class, 
we might understand why long and constant thought 
reduced Southey to idiocy, and why 

"From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow, 
And Swift expires a driveler and a show." 

But, in the worn-out inmates of the workhouse, the ex- 
hausted laborer whose life was one of physical exertion 
only, and in the decrepit gossip, the same phenomena 
present themselves. 

Hallucination is an obscure form of mental aberration ; 
it is an ordinary attendant on inebriation from whatever 
cause; it accompanies sometimes the delirium of fever; 
it shows itself in dyspepsia sometimes unaccountably, and 
very generally in hysteria. But it is idiopathic occa- 
sionally, and may be transient, intermitting, continuous, 
protracted, permanent. I knew an unfortunate wretch 
tormented for years with the presence of serpents all 
about him ; an unhappy lady also, insane all her adult 
life, ceaselessly complaining of the annoyance of the most 
detested vermin, which, like the plagues of Egypt, covered 
her bed, her person, and her food. 

What seat shall we assign this class of affections ? Is 
the morbid impression central or peripheral? The re- 
cipient portion of the nerve, or the percipient substance of 



Intellection. 161 

the brain, which is in fault? Each of the senses may be 
thus disordered : distasteful yisions, discordant sounds, 
disgusting odors, flavors intolerable, and rough and pain- 
ful contact, all annoy the unhappy subject persistently, 
and without interchange. Wherever fixed, the disorder 
is limited, and in some constant and incorrigible. 

Dr. Falconer mentions a case in which cold bodies felt 
intensely hot to the patient; he could not move but he 
was burnt. A gentleman, whose mind was sound in every 
other respect, had constantly the sensation of his mouth 
being full of pieces of broken glass. Another, curious in 
his table and choice in his wines, believed that everything 
tasted of porridge. A lady quitted lodging after lodging, 
being everywhere distressed with the smell of burning 
charcoal. To a patient of Dr. O'Connor's, every object 
appeared diminutive ; one of Baron Larrey's saw men as 
big as giants. 

We have been content, without inquiry, to regard all 
hallucinations as of necessity and in their own nature 
cerebral ; but I think it probable, if closely looked into, 
we may sometimes find the perversion to depend upon 
morbid action or change in the peripheral extremity, 
rather than the central implantation, of the nerve. Such 
instances would resemble the aura of epileptics, a morbid 
sensation doubtless, beginning in the expansion of a nerve, 
and conveying an irritating impression to the sensorium 
commune. 

In the precise and uniform limitation of these disor- 



162 Intellection. 

ders, we have a resemblance to the cases of monomania so 
called ; and we might hope^ if the localization of faculties 
attempted by phrenologists were successful, to discover 
by their means the relation assumed to exist between 
organs and functions. 

The occurrence of an absolute monomania, however, I 
regard as questionable. I have never certainly seen any 
instance in which a single faculty or power of the mind 
was perverted exdudvely; that is, allowing all others 
their normal range and capacity. I have examined many 
such, and have always found some collateral disorder and 
confusion. In medical jurisprudence, it is extremely un- 
safe to suggest or maintain the views which are becoming 
so prevalent in the present day on this point. Unless 
there were certain other exhibitions of mental aberration, 
I cannot agree to hold guiltless a thief, simply because he 
exhibits an inordinate thieving propensity — nor a mur- 
derer, because he is urged on by a homicidal inclination — 
any more than I would acquit of the guilt of assault a 
morbidly pugnacious man. The doctrine is untenable 
and dangerous, and will, if pressed, lead to a cruel and 
savage reaction, as in the case of Baker of Kentucky — 
where a furious maniac suffered the penalties of the law 
while howling defiance to all laws; a scene of inhumanity 
sufficient to have "hung the heavens with black. ^^ 

It is far wiser and more philosophical to lean to the 
opposite course, and even in decided insanity to enforce 
the restraints of responsibility. Consider how often 



Intellection. 163 

lunatics, of the character we are now speaking of, in 
whom some few of the faculties only are disordered — con- 
sider how often and how readily they are amenable to 
ordinary reasoning; to motives of the most universal 
influence; to government of every kind. The brain is a 
dual organ; in few lunatics probably are both hemi- 
spheres affected at once, and in the same mode on both 
sides of any of the numerous ganglia which compose it. 
Almost all maniacs are at least conscious of their condi- 
tion. Few are ignorant of their own wrong doings, 
Solly heard one pleading to Conolly for some indulgence, 
and urging his uniform good behavior since he had been 
admitted to the asylum as an inducement to the granting 
his request. A senator sat in the last Congress, and a 
member in the House of Representatives, who had saga- 
ciously gone of their own accord to Utica to place them- 
selves under the care of the distinguished and successful 
superintendent of the asylum there, the lamented Brig- 
ham — now, alas ! no more. In the institution alluded to, 
I met a very intelligent man, perfectly restored and in 
his right mind, who remained, afraid of relapse, unless 
watched over by the same benevolent and able physician. 
Exler tells us of one who, having been dismissed as cured, 
was sensible one day of an approaching recurrence of his 
disease, and, hastily putting his horses to his carriage, 
drove himself back to the institution, and entered himself 
again as a patient. It seems to me imprudent and un- 
wise, in reference to subjects like these, who need the 



164 Intellection. 

restraints of positive law^ and indeed all other available 
restraints, who feel that they require strong government 
and careful supervision, to remove the fear of future 
penalty, which may act as the strongest of motives to deter 
them from conduct which they know to be wrong, and 
against the temptation to crime which they would shun. 
It is certain that, while there is a class of insane, reckless 
and ungovernable, who repudiate vehemently for the 
most part the excuse of lunacy, and bid defiance to all 
control, there is another class who act under the pretext, 
and avail themselves shrewdly of the presumed irrespon- 
sibility of their condition. It may doubtless be difficult 
always to draw the distinction between them, but it 
should in every instance be attempted at least, and may 
often be clearly attained. 

Again : in such instance of limited disorder, we are 
often called on in court to pronounce upon the capacity of 
the individual to manage his own affairs, or to make a 
will, or to enjoy his personal liberty without restraint. 
In the abstract, it would seem absurd indeed to confine a 
man in an asylum, or take his property from under his 
control, or deprive him of the right to dispose of his own 
effects, because he imagined his leg to be made of glass, 
or believed that the world was destined to come to an end 
in a certain month and day, or supposed himself gifted 
with prophetic or miraculous inspiration. 

The duality of the mind, as exhibited in its employ- 
ment of its double instrument, the brain, may be referred 



Intellection. 165 

to in this connection as explanatory of a large class of 
such phenomena. 

" How far both hemispheres are in simultaneous ac- 
tion/^ says Todd, "during the rapid changes of the mind 
in thought, can scarcely be determined : it seems probable, 
however, that, in certain acts of volition, one only is the 
seat of the change which prompts the movement. If I 
will to move my riglit arm, the change by which that 
movement is prompted belongs to the left hemisphere and 
corpus striatum. Certain cases of disease confined to one 
hemisphere, in which a considerable degree of intellectual 
power persists, denote that the sound one may suffice for 
the manifestation of the changes connected with thought.^^ 

Let us carry out these views practically. I see no rea- 
son to doubt that insanity may depend upon a diseased 
condition altogether confined to one side of the brain. 
In such cases, alternate thoughts and actions will exhibit 
the contrasted character and state of the mind, and at 
times present a varying preponderance of power in the 
sound over the diseased hemisphere, and vice verm. Now, 
in these examples of double existence, we shall aid the 
sane man in his endeavor to govern the insane portion of 
himself, by retaining over him the influence of motive, 
in the accustomed and efficient forms of " hope of reward 
and fear of punishment.^^ 

Many shades of eccentricity, many oddities of mind, 
many peculiarities of opinion, sentiment, and feeling, and 
even many hallucinations exist, which are perfectly com- 
15 



166 Intellection. 

patible with the exact and praiseworthy performance of 
all the duties of life, personal, domestic, social, and even 
public or political ; as well as with the full enjoyment of 
its pleasures. With such as these, society has no direct 
concern, and therefore no right to interfere with the sub- 
ject of them. The law not being infringed, its officers 
are not called upon to make any inquisition into his habits 
or dispositions. Collateral questions may arise, however, 
in such instances. Thus, if an individual were offered as 
a witness in court who labored under the hallucination of 
worshiping and trusting the deities of the heathen my- 
thology, it might be argued that such a belief proved, in 
this day of abundant light, his absolute insanity. I 
would reply, however, that, if his perception on ordinary 
points were clear, he was competent to give testimony, 
provided, further, that his character was good, and he ad- 
mitted the obligation of an oath. His folly in yielding 
his assent to the doctrine of a plurality of gods would 
no more affect his credibility than would the admission 
of Symmes' notion of the existence of an inhabited world 
within the body of this firm and ^^ goodly frame, the earth'^ 
we tread on. 

No necessity can arise at the bar for engaging in the 
delicate discussions as to the pathological distinctions 
which separate delirium from mania, and divide each from 
every other of the numerous forms of depravation and ob- 
scuration of the moral and intellectual faculties. These 
varied shades of mental disorder are there to be considered 



Intellection. 167 

simply in reference : 1st, To their influence upon the se- 
veral relations, social and domestic, of the patient; and 
2d, To their probable permanence or transient duration. 

Good has incorrectly affirmed that ^Hhe judgment and 
the perception are both injured during the existence of 
insanity ;^' and it is this error, prevailing broadly, if not 
universally, that has given such undue importance to the 
general inquiry always instituted as to the sanity or in- 
sanity of an individual. Now, I am far from acknowledg- 
ing the truth of the proposition. On the contrary, cases 
of insanity abound, in which the perceptions are all ac- 
curate, and the judgment alone is impaired ; and, on the 
other hand, not a few can be indicated in which the per- 
ceptions are mistaken or delusive, and the judgment cor- 
rect. ^^Madmen,^^ says Locke, '^ reason rightly on wrong 
premises. ^^ Again, there are multitudes who may be 
called half-mad, being uniformly correct on some points, 
and insane as to others. 

These states of intellectual and moral obliquity have 
nothing in common, and must not be classed together or 
spoken of promiscuously. The mildest and most inoffen- 
sive person — one the most regular in his habits, the most 
exact in his perceptions, the most upright in business, the 
most capable of transacting his affairs, and correctly di- 
viding his property after death — may labor under an irre- 
sistible propensity to suicide. Have we forgotten the 
English minister, under whose government England at- 
tained her loftiest pinnacle of power, the termination of 



168 Intellection. 

whose ambitious and highly successful career is told in a 
single epithet^ alliterally compounded by one of his bit- 
terest political enemies, ^^ carotid artery cutting Castle- 
reagh V^ A second may be the subject of a vehement 
propensity to injure and destroy others, and yet shall be 
acute in business, and clear in his natural, moral, and re- 
ligious views ; and a third shall be under the absolute do- 
minion of fancy, and subject to the strangest hallucina- 
tions, while capable of the full performance of all the 
offices of his station — a penetrating reasoner, a sound ad- 
viser, a valuable friend. 

The justly celebrated Father Pascal was oppressed with 
the belief that he was always on the verge of a precipice, 
over which he was in danger of falling. Under the in- 
fluence of this terror, he would never sit down until a 
chair had been placed on that side of him on whi<?h he 
thought he saw the abyss ; thus drawing the fair infer- 
ence, with which his judgment was duly satisfied, that 
the floor was substantial immediately close to him. There 
is no longer any doubt of the occasional mental obliquity 
of Sir Isaac Newton. Cowper's unhappy case is matter 
of familiar allusion. Not so well known is the instance of 
the Eev. Simon Browne, in the language of Percival, ^^ a re- 
markable and humiliating example of vigor and imbecility, 
rectitude and perversion of understanding.^^ He was re- 
garded by his cotemporaries as a man of eminent intel- 
lectual ability, which was strongly displayed in his defence 
of the religion of nature and the Christian revelation, in 



Intellection. 169 

answer to Tindal. While engaged in the preparation of 
this work, universally allowed to be the best which that 
controversy produced, and indeed for some time previous, 
he believed firmly " that he had fallen under the displea- 
sure of God, who had caused his rational soul gradually 
to perish, and left him only an animal life in common 
with brutes, and that, therefore, though a clergyman, it 
was profane for him to pray, and improper to be present 
at the prayers of others/^ 

If we were to imagine to ourselves the condition of a 
country in which the police should be perfect in all its 
departments, and the government conducted upon princi- 
ples of Utopian excellence, we would suppose it to con- 
template with passive tranquillity all movements of its 
citizens which tended to the general good, or were in 
their own nature indifferent; but to exert a prompt and 
potent efficiency in restraining such acts as might tend to 
result in evil, either to the agent or his fellow-men. Un- 
happily for us, we cannot devise any scheme by which 
the latter of these purposes may be effected; and self- 
destruction, whether by direct or indirect means, is in 
the power of all. In a few very limited communities, 
it is true, the drunkard is put under trusteeship, both 
as to his person and estate; but this interference of au- 
thority is seldom attempted, and then, for the most part, 
so imperfectly carried into execution as scarcely to form 
an exception to the remark. But men everywhere have 
become aware of the development of a malignant and 

15* 



170 Intellection. 

destructive disposition in certain individuals, and have 
provided, for their own protection, modes and means of 
restraint. 

The difference between an insane and a vicious pro- 
pensity is often drawn with great difficulty, and it is one 
of the most important points which can fall under the 
inquiry of a court, whether a man should be punished as 
a criminal, or pitied as an unfortunate lunatic. Burrows 
maintains, with some vehemence, that suicide is generally 
a vice, and contends ^^that, especially when it assumes 
the type of an epidemic, it is a real viceJ^ It is, then, 
he says, the effect of imitation; "those who fall into it 
may be weak and wicked, but it is not the result of that 
physical disorder of the intellectual faculties which is the 
essence of insanity.^^ A strange and confused expression. 

But "physical disorders'' are unquestionably promoted 
and developed by the principles of imitation. Epilepsy 
spreads itself remarkably in this way, as in the Harlaem 
Almshouse in the days of Boerhaave; and not un- 
frequently in our own times, in those convulsions, quasi 
epileptic, which occur during religious exercises among a 
people half informed and violently excited. 

Phrenologists have lately been engaged in hunting for 
an organ of self-destruction, and they will probably find 
it, as they have found so many other organs, which must 
be separate, as they infer, because of the - distinctive 
character of the faculties and propensities which depend 
upon their activity. But Phrenology, though she has 



Intellection. 171 

long located confidently the organs of destructiveness and 
combativeness, has not saved a single life by raising the 
friendly warning of danger from heads of evil conforma- 
tion. She is only ^^wise after the event.^^ So we must 
not indulge in too sanguine expectations of aid from her, 
in anticipating the inclination to shorten life, but proceed 
to examine whether there are any other indications by 
which we may be guided to our task of prevention. 
Suicide, the most desperate of human acts, is often the 
result of motives apparently trifling, and in such cases 
is apt to be committed with great apparent deliberation. 
The slighter shades of ennui have occasioned it, as in 
Dr. Darwin^s patient, who complained to him that ^^a 
ride out in the morning, and a warm parlor, and a pack 
of cards in the evening, comprised all that life affords.'' 
We hardly wonder that, after fifty years of such a life, 
he got tired of it and shot himself. Montaigne and 
others afford us cases of suicide from the most transient 
slights and mortifications. These excite our surprise as 
well as horror; but there are many others which move all 
our sympathies. When we hear of the voluntary death 
of a woman who has lost her honor; of a monarch de- 
throned ; of a warrior beaten in his last battle, as when 
Brutus falls upon his sword after the fatal field of Phi- 
lippi ; of a merchant irretrievably ruined in fortune and 
credit; of a physician whose professional reputation is 
hopelessly blasted, as in the melancholy case of the 
attendant on the Prince>ss Charlotte, we are ready to ac- 



172 Intellection. 

knowledge that, however we may be shocked at the deed, 
it is suggested by feelings common to our whole race. 
^' Time, the great consoler/^ can alone blunt the acuteness 
of mental sufferings in instances like these, and restore 
the tolerance of life. It is the judgment which is un- 
sound in the suicide. Death is chosen as a refuge, because 
of the assumed impossibility of enduring the train of 
evils in prospect; just as the duellist goes out to meet 
his antagonist, because, if he refuse, he will be made to 
groan under an insupportable burden of obloquy and 
disgrace. A singular instance of suicide from disordered 
perceptions J however, came under my own notice a short 
time since, attended with such remarkable confusion and 
even uncertainty of personal identity, that it deserves to 
be recorded. I was called hastily to see a man who had 
cut his own throat with a razor. It was exceedingly 
difficult to dress the wound of the patient on account of 
his earnest outcries against the ruffian who had held him 
down upon the floor and murdered him. 

Whenever a sufficient motive, then, presents itself to 
prompt to suicide any unhappy sufferer from whatever 
cause, he should be carefully watched, and, if need be, re- 
strained by efficient control. Beyond this, there are other 
circumstances that ought to excite suspicion. Burrows says 
that the propensity is most strongly marked in the eye 
and countenance, and that the look can scarcely be mis- 
taken. I wish he had described it, so as to enable us to 
recognize it, which I confess I have failed to do. It has 



Intellection. 1/3 

occurred to me to lose two patients in this way, wliom I 
was attending for ordinary chronic complaints, without 
remarking in their appearance or manner anything strik- 
ing; or unaccustomed. 

We should dread the development of this disposition 
wherever it has been exhibited in the parents, or more 
remote ancestry, for a twofold reason. Besides the trans- 
mission of such peculiar organization as will render pro- 
bable the transmission of hereditary tendencies, there 
must be a knowledge of the fact, which, by affecting the 
imagination, will bring into play the imitative principle. 
Of its strength we have numerous examples ; in the Mile- 
sian women ; in the soldiers of the Hotel des Invalides, of 
whom Cornel relates that, one having hung himself on a 
certain post, he was soon followed by twelve others, but 
the post was cut down, and the evil put a stop to ; in 
the Island of Malta, when last taken possession of by 
the British; at Versailles in 1793, when 1300 suicides 
are said to have taken place ; and at Kouen, when sixty 
destroyed themselves in two months of 1806. 

Intemperance not unfrequently gives rise to a strong 
propensity to suicide. Every physician must have seen 
numerous examples of this kind. But, after all, like the 
gouty predisposition, it can hardly be discovered until it 
has shown itself by some overt act. Such attempts are 
almost invariably repeated until successful. It behooves 
us, therefore, to make a person in this situation an ob- 
ject of the strictest attention and most watchful care. 



174 Intellection. 

Man, in a civilized state, lives under numerous and 
habitual restraints, to which he submits for the sake of 
general safety and comfort. But the preponderance of 
any emotion or passion removes these restraints, and re- 
duces him again to the condition of a savage. While, 
therefore, any ecstasi/ of passion exists, the law should 
lay its powerful hand upon the subject with weight suf- 
ficient to substitute physical force for the subduing 
power of reason, now dethroned. No matter what pas- 
sion it may be, or how much ground for the indulgence 
of sympathy with the sufferer, he is unsafe while under 
its influence, and should be controlled. ^^ Anger is a 
short madness,' ' says the Latin proverb ; love is as mad 
as anger, and unhappily not so brief; and terror, as the 
philosophical Cogan has well remarked, is one of the most 
dangerous of the passions. The perceptions of a man 
laboring under excessive terror are confused; he will de- 
stroy his best friend in fear of him. His judgment is 
desperately perre^^i'ecZ ; he will ^^leap into a pit, his life to 
save.'' Here again we must speak of intemperance. 
^^ Ehrietas^^ says Seneca, ^' nihil aliud est quam voluntaria 
insaniaf' and in all countries governed by wise laws, 
restraint of physical efficiency should be provided for those 
who spontaneously throw away the high privilege, and di- 
vest themselves of the strong controlling power, of reason. 
It is true that, in these civilized regions, men are not armed 
with the sharp and deadly ^^kreese" of the Malay ; nor do 
we often see a voluntary madman ^^run a muck^' in our 



Intellection. 175 

streets, menaciDg every one with his terrible weapon ; but 
we have the unanimous testimony of our barristers and 
judges that a very great majority of the high crimes and 
misdemeanors which demand the severer grades of punish- 
ment are committed under this demoniacal possession. 
It is true, also, that there are fiends in human shape, who 
murder for the mere sake of gratifying a destructive pro- 
pensity, or under the influence of motives so slight that 
they escape notice. Now, here again, I object to the 
force of the general plea of insanity, or non compos mentis. 
I would inquire into the merits of the particular case, and 
let the crime take its character from the motive and pur- 
pose of the murderer, sane or insane. He who can imag- 
ine, contrive, and execute an act of revenge should suf- 
fer the penalty of the diabolical deed; he deserves no pity, 
and can claim no allowance at our hands. Not so the 
unhappy wretch whose hallucination has pointed to this 
particular conclusion, and who may have deprived of life 
the innocent, innocently — nay, with the benevolent pur- 
pose of doing good and conferring happiness. 

To take away the value of testimony, it is not enough, 
it ought not to be, to prove the witness insane, non compos 
mentis. So was Browne — so Pascal — so Newton and 
Cowper ; yet what bench would not willingly have ad- 
mitted the testimony of these men on any question of 
fact on any of the common occurrences of life ! 

I surely need not say that the statements and opinions 
of the patient in reference to any matter connected with 



176 Intellection* 

the subject of his hallucination^ are altogether vitiated^ 
and must not be received; but such a distinction could 
be readily made. It is^ of course, also the duty of the 
court to ascertain the onoral character of the insane, as 
well as of the sane witness — his ordinary veracity, his 
expressed regard for truth, his acknowledgment of the 
sanction of an oath. It is too generally taken for grant- 
ed that the lunatic has lost his moral sense, and takes a 
pleasure in tricks and deception. This is by no means 
correct. The cunning so universally attributed to the 
maniac is developed by the restraints to which he is 
subjected. Most prisoners and slaves become false and 
sly; but of the insane in various modes, who do not 
require confinement, the majority are harmless, and frank, 
and candid. All that I contend for is that a distinction 
should be made. If a lunatic has motive enough, he 
will probably deceive ; but can we better trust the sane ? 
Does not the law indeed follow out the general rule laid 
down by Sir Eobert Walpole, that every man (sane or 
insane) has his price? 

Farther : in reference to the capacity of any individual 
to manage his own affairs, we must not ask of those 
about him the general question merely, Is he, or not, 
compos mentis ? — for, as I have maintained, the inference 
would be unfair, and deeply unjust, if we decide that, 
because he is insane, or laboring under some hallucination, 
or undue propensity, he is unqualified to transact busi- 
ness, or distribute his property at his death, according to 



Intellection. 177 

his own will. Each case should stand on its own merits, 
and the special habits and capacities of each subject be 
cautiously investigated. Not to refer again to the innu- 
merable hosts of suicides, who, to the very moment 
of the fatal act, have carried on with precision and nice 
judgment, all the engagements of life, and even taken 
the utmost pains to diminish the force of the shock which 
they were about to inflict upon the feelings of their 
friends, let us consider the miser who in a besieged city 
sells a mouse for a guinea, and starves with the money in 
his grasp ; let us think of Pascal and Browne, and New- 
ton and Cowper, bright and glorious intellects, whose 
clouds were far from obscuring their bright sky. 

Almost all men who succeed in acquiring, by their own 
exertions, great wealth, exhibit certain eccentricities, 
which are undoubtedly defects of sanity; but which do 
not impair their full ability to take care of, and distribute 
rationally and properly, the sums they have accumulated. 

Many such instances might be mentioned. I will 
select two : I knew familiarly a man of great wealth, 
gathered by his own acuteness and industry. In advanced 
age, his mind was obviously weakened even in regard to 
his property; so that, while thoroughly aware of the ex- 
tent of his possessions, and his total incapacity to spend 
one-third of his income, he mingled, with an exulting 
recollection of these facts, the strongest and most over- 
whelming dread of poverty, and was often melted to pro- 
fuse weeping at the contemplation of its approach. Yet 
16 



178 Intellection. 

lie was exact in the arrangement of all his economy to 
the very last^ and his will was drawn up with the utmost 
carC; justice, and precision. The other is well known 
throughout our country. In perusing the life of Stephen 
Girard, who is not struck with his pertinacious devotion 
to one object? Led forward by a single aspiration, the 
hope of riches, what privations did he not readily 
encounter — what enjoyment did he not promptly forego? 
Did '^ Macedonia's madman, or the Swede,'^ betray more 
obvious marks of a dominant propensity, a ruling passion, 
than this distinguished Frenchman ? Distinguished not 
only for his untiring perseverance in the pursuit of wealth, 
and his unerring judgment as to the means of preserving 
and increasing it, but far more, and in a better sense, 
distinguished for the glorious use to which, at his death, 
he appropriated his accumulated millions — the instruc- 
tion of the young, and the education of the poor and the 
orphan; in this last act of his life, exhibiting an admira- 
ble effusion of the same spirit of benevolence which led 
him, in earlier days, to offer himself at Bush Hill, like 
another Howard, to the service of the sick and the 
wretched, in that devoted house of pestilence and death. 
Amnesia, the loss of memory, has attracted some atten- 
tion, and the books offer us some strange instances of this 
disorder of an important faculty. It always depends, 
I think, upon some obvious physical ailment, usually of 
an apoplectic character or tendency. Feuchstersleben 
tells us of a soldier trephined, who forgot the numbers 



Intellection. 179 

5 and 7; and of a learned man whO; after a fever, forgot 
entirely the letter F. 

Transient loss of memory, even of one's own name, has 
been met with; but this seems to me to be closely allied 
to reverie, or mere abstraction, where great determination 
of nervous power to some particular part of the cerebral 
substance, in deep thought or intense emotion, shall 
leave other portions unsupplied or deprived for a moment. 

This loss of the capacity of retaining impressions, the 
common form of amnesia, is remarkable generally in the 
aged. They recollect what happened long ago; they 
retrace the events of childhood; but the acts and suffer- 
ings of yesterday pass away entirely from their minds. 
This may be the result, and I doubt not often is, of dull- 
ness and unimpressibility of the senses, which receive 
impulses imperfectly, and of course they leave no vestige. 
A curious case is related by Ware, in which the same 
condition occurred as produced by, or following, prolonged 
sea-sickness. The subject suffered ^^a total loss of memory 
of recent events'^ — probably of one or two years back; 
^^ while he would converse with entire correctness and recol- 
lection on all subjects connected with the events and pur- 
suits of the earlier periods of his life. He was unhappily 
conscious of the state of mind into which he had fallen.^^ 

Prof. Jackson has given a history of a transient am- 
nesia, in which, without any paralysis of the tongue, the 
recollection of words was so totally lost that the subject, 
thinking freely and accurately, in vain attempted to ex- 



180 Intellection. 

press or write his thoughts. Vascular pressure on the brain 
being relieved by venesection; the faculty was restored. 
I met with, and published an account of a somewhat 
similar case in 1830. My patient was more permanently 
affected, remaining a long while absolutely incapable of 
finding certain words. These he could generally ready 
but not always. He remained perfectly clear all the 
while in his remembrance of the signs of number, and 
in his employment of these signs. Can we venture to 
explain this by the hypothesis that the idea of a number, 
the impression made by it upon the brain, is more intense, 
clearer, more deeply stamped than that of a word whose 
meaning is somewhat vaguely conventional ; as a figure 
of definite form, bounded by lines and angles of mathe- 
matical precision is more distinctly longer, and more 
readily remembered, than an uncertain shape or a 
shadowy outline. 

But there are certain instances on record of amnesia too 
narrowly limited, and too sharply defined to admit of this 
explanation, or indeed to be accounted for at all on any 
known principles, as in the cases from Feuchtersleben. 

I have already acknowledged that, in the main object of 
our inquiry — the relation which exists, n amely, or which 
is presumed to exist, between certain perversions of intel- 
lection and an actual derangement of condition of the 
part of the encephalon engaged in the performance of the 
special acts of intellection thus perverted — our success has 
not been complete or gratifying. Nay, it is proper to 



Intellection. 181 

adinit clearly that the doctrine of any such established 
relation stands as yet upon very unsatisfactory grounds. 
It is not long, indeed, since the pathological anatomy of 
the brain has been as carefully studied as it deserves to 
be. Our means of examination have also been very 
much improved of late. Careful inspection with the 
microscope, nice chemical analysis — these most available 
means of inquiry have been but recently applied; and 
the important revelations already made promise great 
and useful advances in the same direction. After all, 
however, we must expect that there will be found a large 
class of functional affections in which it will be difficult, 
if not impossible, to discover any change in the appear- 
ance or composition of parts disordered. But it is cer- 
tain that, in proportion as our investigations have been 
better directed, and more patiently and minutely carried 
on, a greater and still increasing number of instances of 
insanity are found to be connected with palpable change 
in the cerebral substance. The brains of the insane are 
found to be harder under some circumstances; to undergo 
induration; to suffer in others from softening; to be af- 
fected on the surface, through the convolutions of gray 
matter, by meningeal inflammation; and within to un- 
dergo effusion, morbid deposition, and purulent destruc- 
tion. 

Of the " partio-general paralysis of the insane,'^ so 
well treated of by Earle, we have learned that it is uni- 
formly attended by, or dependent upon softening of the 

16* 



182 Intellection. 

cerebral substance, which some look upon as an achroma- 
tous inflammation; others rather as a simple lesion of 
nutrition of the part; and others still as an actual spha- 
celation or gangrenous condition. I have had little 
opportunity to examine this subject, but, from a perusal 
of the recorded cases extensively, and observation of the 
few instances under my own notice, lean to the opinion 
that it is, to say the least, by no means essentially con- 
nected with any grade or form of inflammation; nor do 
I think it can be properly termed gangrene, the general 
results of which, in all other tissues, are of so depressing 
and prostrating a character. 

We have also learned that it is, as met with in our 
lunatic asylums, most singularly marked by cheerful- 
ness; and that a peculiar tendency to exaggeration is its 
striking feature. A poor wretch, supported by charity, 
enfeebled beyond the possibility of maintaining a semi- 
erect position, will proclaim himself a sovereign, a puis- 
sant judge, a millionaire, a Hercules, a protector, a God. 

Shall we then conclude that the palpable anatomical 
change constitutes the disease, or clearly explains its 
phenomena ? The answer must surely be in the negative 
in the present state of our knowledge. The existence 
of functional insanity may be said to be abundantly 
proved by an immense mass of facts. Like many other 
diseases, mania is periodical; its access rapid, its cessation 
abrupt. Sometimes it seems to result from the mere 
excitement of a transient propensity, dependent on the 



Intellection. 183 

condition of a remote organ. Eeil relates a strange in- 
stance of this kind in a pregnant woman wlio killed her 
husband, and salted the muscular parts of his body, 
merely from longing, which ran into an eager and irre- 
pressible desire to taste his flesh. 

The relations of insanity to color may be mentioned 
here; but it must be admitted to be doubtful whether 
they are to be referred to impressions merely made on 
the external sense of vision, or to the emotional results 
of such impression. Eosch and Esquirol, very high 
authority, tell us that indigo-dyers are apt to fall into 
melancholy; those who dye scarlet, on the other hand, 
become choleric or violent. Paracelsus, shrewdest of 
mountebanks, long since advised the use of red coral 
against melancholy, and declares blue to be injurious in 
such cases. Hence, perhaps, the vulgar phrase, ^^blue 
devils,^' for gloom, low spirits, and despondency. 

The hereditary nature of insanity, which cannot be 
doubted, afibrds, I think, strong proof of the connection 
of morbid structure, however obscurely minute and diffi- 
cult to exhibit, with morbid action. The development is 
almost always of the same nature in the son as in the 
father; thus we have the suicidal disposition in several 
successive generations. A careful examination of a few 
series of such examples seems to me to promise much 
instruction. Given, a similarity of mental derangement 
of whatever nature, morbid propensity to the use of 
stimulants, as in the hereditary drunkard; perverted 



184 Intellection. 

judgment, and so forth, we have only to detect, if we 
can, and trace out anatomical peculiarities whose repeated 
coincidence will show the seat and perhaps the nature 
of the evil. 

We may be aided somewhat in our endeavor to ascer- 
tain the direct influence of the brain in intellection, by a 
study of the physical conditions of idiocy, a subject 
which has of late received much enlightened attention 
from the profession. In idiocy, the brain is in the great 
majority smaller than natural; smaller, too, in proportion 
to the degree of mental and moral defect. The average 
weight of brain is about three pounds. The largest 
mentioned are those of Cuvier, lbs. 4.11 ; and of Du- 
puytren, lbs. 4.10, both somewhat diseased. In two 
idiots, the weight was lb. 1.6, and lb. 1.11. The 
hemispherical ganglions are chiefly below the average: 
the convolutions are fewer, and not so strongly marked; 
so also in the negro, and in certain classes of the lower 
orders. They are also more symmetrical; a departure 
from symmetrical arrangement being always coincident 
with intellectual elevation. ^' Curiously enough,^ ^ says 
Solly, ^^we find them (the convolutions which are not 
precisely alike on both sides of the brain) almost in 
exact correspondence in the brain of the monkey, and 
the idiot, and even in some of the lowest of the negroes.^' 
The lamellee of the cerebellum are also much less nume- 
rous than in the normal brain. 

The sympathetic nerve, and its ganglia, are, on the 



Intellection. 185 

other hand, greatly developed. The amount of phospho- 
rus in the cerebral matter is less than in normal brains. 

The Cretin of the Alps presents a complicated con- 
dition of idiocy which is endemic and offered in large 
masses; more frequent in some of the valleys than in 
others. These poor creatures are imbecile in various 
degrees; some are useful household drudges; some are 
employed in agricultural occupations. They are social^ 
too, sometimes; I have seen several sitting together, 
silent and seemingly abstracted. In simple idiocy, 
the first degree of fatuity seems to consist in want of 
attention, or of the capacity to control it; the next is 
abulia, or want of energy, or steadiness of iciU. Anses- 
ihesia, or defect of impressibility, sensibility, is the last 
stage. It is even known that they sometimes forget to 
swallow, and so choke with food, and die. But this is not 
mere forgetfulness; it consists sometimes in actual incapa- 
city to co-ordinate muscular actions that must be associ- 
ated to effect a given result, which probably depends 
upon the deficient development of the cerebellum. 

In the complicated idiocy of Cretinism, we have com- 
bined, 1. Goitre, enlargement of the thyroid gland. 2. 
Imperfect or disordered vision. 3. Stunted growth, and 
4. Deaf mutism. How consoling is the reflection that 
modern philanthropy has prevailed to elevate the con- 
dition of even these unhappy outcasts from birth. Gug- 
genbuhl was the first who had the boldness to conceive 
the possibility, and the perseverance to prove it by his 



186 Intellection. 

personal labors^ of educating Cretins. Such is the fortu- 
nate result that we have a very good essay on Cretinism 
from the pen of a cultivated and educated Cretin, Odet. 

The simple idiocy of other regions has been also care- 
fully attended to by Ferrus in France; Twining, re- 
cently dead, in England; and Howe, in our own country. 
May God's blessing rest on all such benevolent efforts ! 

With far better hope, and with infinitely fairer pros- 
pects do we now struggle to improve the condition of the 
insane also when incurable, and to restore their reason 
when only transiently impaired. It is impossible to exag- 
gerate the value of the services of those who have been 
engaged in these labors of love in modern times, from 
Pinel who commenced the system of management now 
in operation all over the civilized world, to Esquirol, 
Haslam, Conolly, and the body of superintendents of 
the asylums in these United States, a collection of gentle- 
men whose character and intelligence do honor to our 
country and our profession. 

Half a century ago, and even less, a lunatic asylum 
was a prison, the dungeons of which were not only places 
of confinement, but of punishment; whose keepers were 
often executioners, in whose hands was placed the power 
of chain and scourge. Now, the visitor sees smiling and 
contented groups engaged in social conversation, or in 
exercise, or useful labor. The proportion of those re- 
stored to active external life is vastly increased, and for 



Intellection. 187 

the remainder^ all the evils of their lot are soothed by 
kindness and benevolence. 

Gheel is a well-known colony of the insane^ in Bel- 
gium, in which the experiment is made of collecting 
them in small, well-arranged houses, and engaging them 
in steady occupation. This resort, we are told, presents 
numerous instances of cure, and much comparative happi- 
ness; ascribed to the fresh air in which they are much 
indulged; the rural labor which they are engaged in; 
the order which is preserved among them, and the judi- 
cious skill and constant attention bestowed upon them. 

The plans of management of the insane must have 
for their basis a proper classification of the cases, and a 
due observance of the peculiarities of each individual 
attack. Thus we shall have for fatuity, amentia, dementia^ 
steady discipline, and assiduous instruction; for violent 
mania, soothing and firm restraint, when necessary. It is 
under this head that the use of narcotics, always cautiously 
employed, has been recently extended, and made more ef- 
fectually beneficial by the introduction of the modern anaes- 
thetics. Chloroform has been servieeably administered 
already in numerous instances, although some caution is 
found to be necessary. An interesting account of its 
effect upon a few patients in the Utica Asylum is given 
in the last Annual Report. In delirium tremens, the 
analogue of another large class in which the symptoms 
of irritation strangely simulate those of the inflammatory 
attacks to which I have just referred, the same impressive 



188 Intellection. 

agent has been extensively experimented with, and the 
results have been in general eminently gratifying. In- 
deed these two sets of derangements approach each other 
very closely in their therapeutical indications. Sleep is 
the sine qua non in the cure of one, and the most im- 
pressive step towards the relief of the other. 

For melancholy; gloomy and depressing insanity, the 
best hope is found in the exhibition of a gentle and 
cheerful sympathy; in well-regulated occupation, active 
exercise, varied distractions by amusement, social games, 
religious services, music, lectures, dancing, and even 
theatrical entertainments. Thus the diseased portion of 
the brain is relieved from constant determination by a 
persevering deviation to other parts, and an invigorating 
exercise of the whole. 



hygiene. 



17 



HYGIENE. 



THE Philosophy of health is a topic which should 
surely interest all classes of readers. Our physical 
well-being depends upon an infinite variety of contingen- 
cies, some of which seem to be entirely beyond our 
control; others are absolutely at our disposal, and ar- 
rangement; while a third, and very numerous class, 
submit themselves to be modified in some measure, or 
may be evaded in greater or less degree. 

How important is it that these should all be carefully 
studied, and correctly appreciated! With what eager- 
ness should we press to learn the lessons of experience, 
and avail ourselves of the lights of science, that we may 
know how to shun or counteract the hostile agencies, 
and invite and foster the more genial and friendly in- 
fluences that surround us. 



192 Hygiene. 

It would scarcely be proper to affirm that the consi- 
deration of this series of subjects has been neglected; but 
they certainly have failed, hitherto, to obtain the kind 
and degree of attention to which they are so obviously 
entitled. Hygiene, practically the science of prevent ion ^ 
whose pure and elevated object is the extinction of dis- 
ease, has had, until recently, no separate functionary in 
our social institutions, no definite place in the progress 
of our advancing civilization. And even now, her voice 
is feebly uttered, scarcely listened to, and almost void of 
authority. We have no professors of hygiene in our 
colleges; our boards of health are -clothed with little 
power, and their recommendations destitute of influence, 
except in times of occasional panic, or when directed 
against nuisances palpably offensive. No place of honor 
or profit is assigned by the body politic to the philan- 
thropist who volunteers his services in this department. 
Commissions are appointed, and report; associations 
organize themselves, and publish documents, and pre- 
sent memorials; registers are m.ade, facts recorded, and 
principles clearly deduced; yet all with so little effect, 
that no single great step has anywhere been taken in the 
right direction. 

It is difficult to make definite alterations in the fixed 
face of things ; to open parks amidst the dense masses of 
brick and stone that constitute our cities; to tunnel with 
sewers the earth encumbered with the thick foundations 
of thronged edifices ; to raze the crowded blocks which 



Hygiene. 193 

impede the air and light; to ventilate the narrow hovel, 
to drain the damp cellar, to illume the dark dwelling of 
the poor. Such are the obstacles, and they seem almost 
insurmountable, which impede the hygienic movements 
of old and settled communities, and paralyze the ener- 
getic philanthropy which yet refuses to succumb. Are 
they not full of warning to us, a nation yet in infancy, 
or youth, whose cities are just starting into growth and 
expansion, and taking on the form destined to be perma- 
nent for good or evil? We have not, even in the New 
World, a moment to lose; nay, too much time has been 
already lost in careless neglect of these matters, so im- 
portant to us and to our posterity. 

In the distribution of offices in the busy life of our 
race, to the profession is allotted the glorious contest 
with suffering and sorrow, disease and death; our toils 
endless, ever urgent, darkened with frequent disappoint- 
ment and repeated defeat; illumined still with ever- 
renewed hope, and the manly resolution which finds 
courage even in despair. For my part, I desire no better, 
no prouder occupation; the loftiest ambition might ex- 
patiate with ample range, and full contentment, in the 
Promethean struggle to counteract the malignant agencies 
that beset our frail and wretched brotherhood, and render 
less rugged and thorny the brief passage which conducts 
from the cradle to the tomb. 

The mere announcement of our purposes cannot but 
meet with approbation and sympathy; yet, strange to say, 



194 Hygiene. 

these sentiments far more readily attach themselves to 
the inferior, than to the superior — to the part, than to the 
whole. Proffer any remedy for any ailment; adduce but 
a shadow of proof that you have invented a means of 
relief from any particular grievance, and crowds of fol- 
lowers and heaps of wealth shall be your recompense. 
But the far greater boon of protection — prevention, 
which science vouchsafes to the wretched victims of 
disease with so much certainty, is scarcely valued enough 
to be investigated. It is difficult to persuade individuals 
or communities into measures the most reasonable and 
promising, even when experience has confirmed their 
applicability and importance. And thus it is also in 
moral and social life. We neglect the child, and punish 
the guilty man. We refuse the means of education, but 
stringently inflict penalties upon ignorance. 

I am exceedingly anxious to impress all my readers 
with the paramount importance of this department of 
our divine science, and to induce them to prepare them- 
selves with all assiduity to aid in its incessant cultivation 
and improvement. To prevent a single attack of disease 
is, in my mind, a clearer benefit, a more gratifying tri- 
umph, than to assist or preside at the cure of many 
similar attacks. To ascertain definitely and counteract 
the cause of any malady, is to effect the extermination 
of that malady so far as it depends on that cause. If a 
disease depend then upon one cause alone, as rachialgia 
upon the gaits of lead, or mania a potu upon alcoholic 



Hygiene. 195 

stimulation, its absolute extinction is shown to be physi- 
cally in our power; if upon a concurrence of causes, each 
of which contributes somewhat to its generation, it di- 
minishes the chances of such production to detect and 
expose any one of them, which being neutralized or 
avoided, a less uniform or less vehement influence will be 
exerted, and the escape of some of its subjects rendered 
probable. And, surely, no one will doubt that we can 
effect thus much in every supposable case. All that is 
required to obtain a steadily progressive advantage in the 
contest, and a success ever widening, is to direct our 
attention perpetually to these inquiries; gather and com- 
municate freely all facts well ascertained; and derive 
from them, with all due caution, the guiding principles 
which they indicate and establish. 

It is not yet settled what Health is ; whether we are 
to regard it as a positive or a negative condition of the 
system ; whether it is to be acquired on the one hand, 
or on the other only to be protected and preserved from 
impairment. Upon the answer to these questions, must 
clearly depend, in a certain degree, our doctrines of 
hygiene. Commencing our task with the physical edu- 
cation of the infant newly born, we shall, if we adopt 
the latter view, which at first sight seems most rational, 
abstain from interfering farther than to avoid carefully 
everything which may injure or pervert; if the former, 
we shall feel it to be our duty actively to set about ob- 
taining and introducing what is defective, and restoring 



196 Hygiene. 

what has been lost. We shall perhaps, on reflection; 
conclude that there can be no abstract rule laid down for 
our government here however, and that each case must 
be individualized, and considered in its own special rela- 
tions. 

The physical education of the young has been in all 
ages, and communities, matter of most interested in- 
vestigation; but, after all, there has been very little 
settled clearly concerning it. Necessity and custom, 
founded often, perhaps generally, upon a previously 
existing necessity, seem to have dictated all the rules 
commonly followed. The children of the poor are every- 
where subjected to, and crushed under this tyrannical 
necessity. As an English writer well phrases it : ^^ they 
are not brought up, but dragged up/^ Air, light, abun- 
dant food, and large proportion of sleep, are requisite to 
the full and healthy development of the tender frame; 
but they are born in narrow, close, dark chambers, in 
which, from over-crowding, they are stinted in the due 
supply of vital air, and enjoy no seclusion for undisturbed 
sleep; nor can they obtain, for the most part, a sufficient 
amount of their proper food from mothers^ who, them- 
selves but half-fed, are badly fitted to serve as nurses. 
A striking example of the influence of these contingen- 
cies is to be noted at Preston, Lancashire. In that 
region, we are told, are born the largest infants known ; 
probably descended from the gigantic Danes, England's 
early conquerors. They are said to weigh, on the ave- 



Hygiene. 197 

rage, some pounds more than the younglings of any other 
portion of our race. But their parents are poor — live 
hard, and work hard; and they, in their turn, under 
these burdens, grow up, say the records, into one of the 
most stunted populations in Great Britain. 

The mothers of the poor, I have said, are but indiffer- 
ent wet-nurses; but in all the lower ranks of life, woman 
does a large share of the labor which gives the means of 
subsistence; and hence, the necessity of labor interfering 
with her maternal duties makes her an irregular and in- 
efficient dry-nurse also, and her child must suffer much, 
and inevitably from its helplessness. Now the wonder 
is, not that so many die under these contingencies, but 
that so many survive; and this single fact exhibits in 
strong relief the amazing powers, both of resistance and 
accommodation, inherent in the animal organism. But 
they do not merely survive; the poor grow up everywhere 
in large numbers, strong and enduring; many of them 
tall and robust; the men athletic, and the women fruitful 
in spite of the host of unfavorable circumstances indi- 
cated above. Yet it is a sad truth that the expectation of 
life for them is less by many years than of those in better 
condition ; in other words, it is proved, as we learn from 
the researches of Guy and Knox, that the gentleman 
may reasonably calculate on living from ten to twenty 
years longer than the laborer. Farther, if we observe 
closely, on a large scale, the influence of these circum- 
stances, we shall first notice, as the most obvious and 



198 Hygiene. 

immediate^ an impairment of the form and visage, 
whose originally glorious beauty proves man to have 
been created in the ^^ express image of his maker/' Go 
into our orphan-houses, and our alms-houses — visit the 
thronged hovels which encumber the by-streets and alleys 
of our great cities, and compare the children of the poor 
with those of more fortunate parentage. With some 
exceptions, doubtless — but with how few, alas I — we shall 
look vainly there for those radiant lineaments and smiling 
eyes which belong to early childhood, and seem to tell us 
of a brighter sphere, and an ethereal origin justifying 
the enthusiastic exclamation of the poet : 

^'' Heaven lies about us in our infancy — 
And trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God who is our home." 

Nay, more. Is it not easy, even in the dead body, to 
tell what the previous condition of the subject has been? 
Besides the hard hand, the coarser figure, and the less 
perfect symmetry, are there not indelible traces of toil 
and suffering in the physiognomy and universal aspect 
of the poor, hard-working man and woman ? What can 
we expect, then, but that these will be transmitted as 
an inheritance — delivered down more or less markedly 
to their offspring; become more and more prominent, 
and, accumulating in successive generations, as they pass 
across the field of sorrow, until the whole frame, in 
every organ, and on every surface, shall be, as it were, 



Hygiene. 199 

scarred and deformed with these wounds inflicted by in- 
exorable destiny? 

If I dwell on this painful theme^ it is not only in the 
hope that something may be done to mitigate its horrors^ 
and to suggest measures having that tendency, but to 
draw attention to the fact that the evils thus depicted in 
their darker shades, are often present and submitted to, 
when less intense in their concentration, by those who 
might remove or correct them in great part, if not alto- 
gether — thoughtless, uninformed, or neglectful parents, 
who may, if they will, command access to free air, fresh 
water, and glowing sunshine. Those who have fallen 
below this point, as especially happens in cities, come 
under the management of the communities to which they 
belong as paupers; their cases are uncontrollable by indi- 
vidual action, but form an item in the topic of public 
hygiene. 

It is the extreme helplessness of the human infant 
which renders it so exquisitely dependent upon its 
mother, not only as its nurse — a relation upon which 
stress enough is apt to be laid — but as a protector and 
attendant chiefly. The prodigious mortality recorded as 
occurring among children of foundling hospitals, in Paris 
and elsewhere, has been ascribed, by general consent, 
almost exclusively to the want of a suScient supply of 
their natural food. Doubtless, the breast of a healthy 
mother is the best source from which infant life can be 
sustained; but a substitute is more easily found for this 



200 Hygiene. 

than for the indispensable care^ and handling, and sedu- 
lous attendance of the parent. In every city we may 
daily see the little creatures fat and chubby, growing and 
thriving upon the milk of the cow, or the goat, prepared 
and offered by the tender hand of the maternal dry-nurse. 
This best, and most nutritious diet, milk, a compound, as 
Liebig tells us, of every constituent element of which 
the body is to be built up, should be, at first, its only 
food, and for a much longer period than is usual. We 
are often asked, when a child should be weaned. Let 
nature answer the question. When the fountains of 
supply begin to be exhausted, and the juvenile appetite 
craves a larger amount than it can obtain from this best 
source, and the teeth show themselves, and the instinct* 
ive inclination to bite and masticate is irrepressibly 
manifested; then, and not till then, let the process begin. 
Let care be taken that all solids offered, be reduced to 
the proper state of minute division, until the child is 
taught to chew them, and never to swallow them without 
visible and somewhat prolonged trituration. 

The evils of too early weaning are obvious enough; 
but are there none which follow the opposite extreme? 
Does not some consistent modification of the gastric 
juices take place at the time of dentition, preparatory to 
the change of food now impending, and adapted to such 
change ? This seems at least probable, if it cannot be 
proved. If any new powers of digestion are developed, 
will they not be impaired and diminished by want of 



Hygiene. 201 

use? Is not the new variety for which the stomach 
calls, as life advances, a new mode of stimulation 
essential to the full and perfect health of the little sub- 
ject ? If these questions be answered, as it seems to me 
they must, in the affirmative, there must be some risk in 
the management that shall prevent or impede these 
changes and their influences. Some tell us that children 
suckled too long become feeble and rickety ; others, that 
they show a tendency to cerebral affections, hydrocepha- 
lus in early childhood, and headaches in mature age. 
For my part, I am not satisfied that we have accumulated 
facts enough to establish any definite doctrines ; but there 
is much to excite a close inquiry. Of one thing I am 
certain, that, whether or not the physical health of over- 
nursed children is thereby affected, an unfriendly influ- 
ence is exerted upon their moral and intellectual faculties; 
they are apt to be vacillating and effeminate, selfish, 
petulant, and passionate. 

Next to wholesome food and fresh air, light is most . 
indispensable to the development of the animal body. 
Without its due admission, the complete symmetrical 
growth of the perfect organism is impossible. Edwards 
found animals became defective and deformed in a few 
generations, if brought up in the dark. In the vast 
recesses of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, amidst the 
profound gloom which broods there, unbroken by one ray 
from Heaven, and in a silence disturbed only by the ripple 
of the majestic rivers that roll their waters through the 
18 



202 Hygiene. 

abyss, are found tte pale, small, eyeless fish — a scaly Al- 
bino of delicate, slender, and graceful figure ; and the milk- 
white cray-fish, destitute both of the organ and faculty of 
vision. But air and light, which act not only upon the 
lung and the eye, but upon the whole cutaneous surface, 
cannot impress that surface if encrusted either with its 
own secretions, or any adventitious coating of whatever 
nature. A little boy, covered with gold foil, to appear 
as the symbol of the golden age, in a procession before 
Louis XIV., soon died from closure of the cutaneous 
pores; and so have died, repeatedly, animals smeared 
over with an impervious gummy solution, or varnish, for 
experiment's sake. We must, therefore, inculcate clean- 
liness as a first necessity to the growing child. Better 
starve or suffocate him outright than keep him half 
alive, pale, and languishing, in foul clothes, and foul 
dark air. 

While tracing, in the manners and customs of various 
nations, the various modes of rearing their children, and 
observing their efiTects upon the developments of the 
individuals, and the ultimate character, physically con- 
sidered, of the communities, we shall learn the necessity 
of extended observation, and the danger of drawing 
hasty conclusions. Every modern writer on Hygiene 
in our language enjoins it, as an established rule, that 
an infant must be loosely clad, and that he must be in- 
dulged in early and free locomotion, in order that his 
limbs may become stout, and well formed, and his mus- 



Hygiene. 203 

cles full and vigorous; and this is echoed on every side, 
until all the tribes of British origin place their children 
as soon as possible upon the floor, and with as little 
clothing as decency will permit. Now, without running 
into any extreme on the other side, or falling into the 
dogmatism and exclusiveness which I have denounced, 
may I not be permitted to suggest, in reference to this 
custom of setting our manikins to creeping, and crawling, 
and climbing, in the very dawn of their dumpy existence, 
that the noble, grave, and manly easterns still swathe 
their babes, as erst zVi the Stable at Bethlehem ; that the 
Italians, who follow the same practice very extensively, 
are among the most perfect and symmetrical of our race ; 
and that the red Indian, whose papoose, for convenience 
of handling and transportation, is almost constantly 
rolled up, and bandaged to a board, or slip of -bark, and 
swung to a tree, or on the back of his mother, is still 
remarkable, as West pronounced him, for his fine straight 
figure — the young Mohawk thus resembling the Belvidere 
Apollo ? 

The human infant was never intended to march upon 
all-fours — a mode of locomotion for which the structure 
of his lower limbs singularly unfits him; and which, 
besides, degrades the hand, that most exquisite and 
characteristic member to which he owes so much of his 
superiority, far below its proper use. Nor do I think he 
should be permitted, or encouraged, to stand erect and 
bear the weight of his body upon his lower limbs, while 



204 Hygiene. 

their cartilaginous structure^ unbardened as yet by 
the deposition of bone-earth, renders them liable to be 
bent into a curve; this form, whatever we may say of 
Hogarth's line of beauty in general, is here neither beau- 
ful nor useful, and is not desirable. 

Nature rather intends that the little helpless creature 
shall live entirely by the care of those who surround it, 
and that its change of place shall be absolutely passive 
until its joints are perfectly knit, and its bones grow firm; 
and that meanwhile its most active exercise shall consist 
in crowing, and laughing, and loud crying, which circu- 
late its puny currents of blood most vehemently, where 
to most salutary purpose, in the vessels of the lungs, and 
in and over the rosy skin. 

Passing by the several stages of babyhood, we will 
now suppose the child ready to go to school, and fit to 
receive the "sincere milk of the word,^^ of wisdom, 
human and divine. The generation to which I belong 
has witnessed many changes in the physical arrangements 
bearing upon this great concern, with what results, let us 
inquire. " In the present state of civilization,^^ says the 
elder Dr. Warren, "a child, soon after it can walk, is 
sent to school, not so much for the purpose of learning, 
as to relieve its parents of the trouble of superintending 
its early movements. As he grows older, the same plan 
is incessantly improved on, till a large part of his time is 
passed in sedentary pursuits, and crowded rooms. In 
the short intervals of confinement at school, the boy is 



Hygiene. 205 

allowed to follow the bent of his inclination, and seek in 
play that exercise which nature imperiously demands. 
The development of his system, though not what it is 
intended to be, is attained in a certain way; and he is 
exempt from some of the evils which fall heavily on the 
other sex. The girl, at an early age, is discouraged from 
activity as unbecoming, and is taught to pass her leisure 
hours in a state of quietude at home. The effects of this 
habit are that about half the young females, brought up 
as they are at present, undergo some visible and obvious 
change of structure ; and of the remainder, a large num- 
ber are the subjects of great and permanent deviations, 
while not a few entirely lose their health from the 
manner in which they are reared.^' He states these facts 
still more definitely afterwards, in the following phrase : 
^^I feel warranted in the assertion that, of the well- 
educated females within my sphere of experience, about 
one-half are affected with some degree of distortion of 
the spine. ^' He goes on to quote from a late author, 
Lachaise, whom he pronounces one of the most judicious 
of foreign writers, the assertion that, ^^on the continent 
of Europe, curvature of the spine is so common that, 
out of twenty young girls who have attained the age of 
fifteen years, there are not two who do not present 
manifest traces of it.^' Add to this the opinion of Prof. 
Linsley, of "Washington, whose central position and con- 
nections give him the most extensive opportunities for 

18* 



206 Hygiene. 

observation, that our own dear women of America are the 
most unhealthy women in the world. 

There must be something essentially wrong in a sys- 
tem of which these are the natural and ordinary conse- 
quenceS; and we must abandon it at once, or modify it 
greatly. I will not conceal my belief that, in the views 
given above, some exaggeration, involuntary and unin- 
tended, is to be allowed for ; but the weighty authorities 
whom I have named, command our respect, and inspire 
us with grief and apprehension. If half of what they 
tell us be true, it is enough to demand instant inquiry, 
and the most serious attention. 

We are bound to fix correctly, though in a general or 
average way, the proper period of going to school, and the 
proper distribution of time at school. As infant schools 
first originated in the English Dame-school, they were 
not only purely beneficial, but filled up a vast desideratum 
in the early life of the poor. The laboring woman, 
forced to leave her young ones in order to procure sub- 
sistence for them, was but too happy to entrust them, in 
the meanwhile, to some infirm or superannuated matron 
of her own class. Such an one might thus bear the daily 
burden of many families, and earn her own support by a 
very trifling fee from each mother whose place she thus 
supplied. Although not thought of probably at first, and 
always regarded as very secondary, it is not diflScult to 
imagine, in the little circle thus collected, the imperative 
necessity of order and discipline, and the ready aid of 



Hygiene. 207 

the alphabet in enforcing both^ besides its influence in 
pleasing the parents. Unfortunately, however, some 
busy philanthropists noticed the opportunity — too tempt- 
ing to be lost — of cultivating this young shrubbery of 
fresh wild intellect. For a short time, all went well, and 
merrily enough, too, when the celebrated Wilderspin in- 
troduced simple singing ; the whole of the exercises being 
little more than regulated play — systematic gymnastics, 
instead of rambling and mischief in the street, or on the 
common. The old dame of whom we spoke was in no 
danger of exerting too stringent restraint on the one 
hand, or on the other of stimulating unduly the imma- 
ture intellect; but both these evils soon were engrafted 
on the system by the hands of ordinary schoolmasters 
and mistresses, and so much injury accrued, compensated 
by so little comparative benefit, that the whole machinery 
has sunk into deserved disrepute. 

Yet we must not run into the opposite extreme. Cob- 
bett tells us that no one of his children received a single 
compulsory lesson before the age of sixteen, and it is well 
known that his family are above the average of attain- 
ment and intelligence. This is an exception, however, 
and one easily accounted for. "The best education,^^ 
Mrs. Hamilton truly says, "is that of example.^^ The 
son of the carpenter clutches with his little hand the 
hammer and the saw of his father ; the gardener^s child 
cultivates a plot of ground. Thus Cobbett's children, see- 
ing him perpetually engaged with his book and his pen, 



208 Hygiene. 

their curiosity to find out the purpose of such work, and 
the instinctive disposition to imitate what they saW; ren- 
dered it expedient rather to restrain them than to urge 
them. If children be not offered some such example, as in 
the great mass of instances where the father carries on his 
pursuits abroad, and the mother is absorbed in domestic 
occupation, their minds will run to waste, and hence it 
is that the habits and the emulation of the school-room 
become necessary excitants. But they must not be ap- 
plied prematurely, or in undue force, or too protractedly. 
Even in the most beneficent enterprises, we may go too 
fast, and too far. ^' Children under fourteen,'' says Dr. 
Warren, '^ should not be kept in school more than six or 
seven hours a day, and this period should be shortened 
for females. It should be broken into many parts, so as 
to avoid a long confinement at one time.'' The evil is 
not all done in the school-room, we ought to remember; 
the lessons there laid out to be got in the intervals con- 
sume much additional time. Thus I have often known 
five hours successively spent in school by little girls of 
six to ten, and two or three more laboriously employed at 
home, in preparing the next day's exercises. I would 
regulate the hours of study in a general ratio to the age 
of the child : Between three and five years of age, three 
hours a day of school discipline are as much as can be 
allowed; from five to ten, we may impose five hours daily 
of study and confinement, but no more ; from ten to four- 
teen, six or seven hours may be spent in preparing and 



Hygiene. 209 

recitipg lessons, and in undergoing all instruction and 
practice in whatever departments. Sir Thomas More^ in 
his exquisitely imagined Utopia, does not allow more than 
seven hours of regular labor to be allotted to any one. 

I fully agree with the venerable author above quoted, 
in questioning the propriety of " the application of the 
system of rivalry/^ as he phrases it, "to the softer sexf 
of arousing in them the spirit of emulation — the ambi- 
tion to excel. He speaks charmingly of the success of 
principles and motives of higher character, better adapted 
to these more pliant subjects — the force of reason, the 
sense of duty, the desire to be loved, and the patient and 
kindly influence of the good teacher. 

If I admitted of the distribution of premiums at all 
among girls, it should be for gentleness, docility, good- 
ness; but for no form of cleverness. Among boys there 
is no substitute for the great motive of the manly 
breast— ambition ; but it must not be too strongly stimu- 
lated. Applying it cautiously, I would always aid it with 
the most familiar impelling power of the olden world, 
a favorite clearly of the wise Solomon — the time-honored 
rod, which it is too much the fashion of the present 
day, and in the western hemisphere especially, to neglect. 

We must carefully repress the premature development 
of the intellect or the passions. Precocity of every 
kind is a dangerous condition. The complicated organism 
is constructed for the performance of so much work, and 
no more; the greatest amount is to be attained by a pru- 



210 Hygiene. 

dent adjustment of the demands made upon the several 
parts of the machine. I do not, by any means, object to 
systematic gymnastics and callisthenics, but I protest 
earnestly against the substitution of them for the wilder, 
nay, the wildest and most riotous, games of noisy child- 
hood. So far from being incompatible, indeed, they may, 
and should be made to concur in the full development of 
the physical powers. In the merry dance of graceful 
girlhood, where the elastic buoyancy of the young limb is 
restrained by the regulating rhythm of inspiring music, 
utility, beauty, and pleasure are delightfully blended. 
Scarcely less utility, though with the minimum of grace 
and enjoyment, belongs to the stiff, but precise, active, 
and forcible movements taught in our military acade- 
mies — fountains of our country^s glory and pride. 

In this relation, we would bring to the notice of 
teachers one particular topic which has not been con- 
sidered as it deserves. In fact, it is definitely treated of 
by but one writer, the sagacious Holland. This is, we 
use his language — ^Hhe variation in the mental faculty, 
of holding one image or thought continually before it, as 
the object of contemplation. The limit to this faculty, 
in all men, is certain and obvious ; and, in most cases, 
narrower than is generally supposed. The persisting 
retention of the same idea manifestly exhausts the mind. 
But, nevertheless, the power, as to time, is very differ- 
ent in different individuals, is susceptible of cultivation, 
and, if cultivated with care in the discipline, becomes a 



Hygiene. 211 

source of the highest excellencies of an intellectual and 
moral nature. It stands contrasted with that desultory 
and powerless state of mind which is unable to regulate 
its own workings, or to retain the thought fixedly on 
points most essential to the object of it.^' 

We arC; indeed, too apt to regard thought as a quasi 
telegraphic, electrical, or luminous movement, totally in- 
dependent of the element of time; but this demands to 
be distinctly recognized, and allowed for. ^^ There is,^' 
continues the author last quoted, ^^a material variation 
in the time in which the same mental functions are per- 
formed by different individuals, depending on different 
organization, or on causes of which we can give no ac- 
count. This holds good, not only in acts purely mental, 
but also in those associated with material phenomena. 
The difference is yet more remarkable from comparison 
of states in the same person, and from that examination 
of consciousness which every one may make for himself. 
It will be felt that there are moments when the percep- 
tions and thoughts are not only more vivid, but seem to 
pass more rapidly and urgently through the mind, than 
at others; and the same with regard to the voluntary 
power (the power of volition).'^ 

Locke also tells us " there is a kind of restiveness in 
almost every one's mind. Sometimes, without perceiving 
the cause, it will boggle and stand still, and one cannot get 
it a step farther, and at another time it will press forward, 
and there is no holding it in.'^ But it is rare indeed to 



212 Hygiene. 

find a teacher prepared to make any allowance for this 
variation in the capacities of thought and perception in 
the youth under his charge. The universal custom of 
instruction is well expressed by the author of Waverly, 
in the extract from the old play, at the head of one of 
his chapters : — 

" You call this education, do you not ? 
Wh}^, 'tis the forced march of a herd of bullocks 
Before a shouting driver. The glad van 
Move on at ease, and pause awhile to snatch 
A passing morsel from the dewy greensward. 
While all the blows, the oaths, the indignation, 
Fall on the croup of the ill-fated laggard 
That cripples in the rear." 

Or the pedagogue may have taken a hint from the 
Chinese duck-herd, who has hired for his flock the privi- 
lege of feeding on some rice-field lining the canal on 
which he is domiciliated in his movable dwelling. The 
last waddler who reaches the plank leading from the 
shore to the boat, after the signal of return has been 
given, receives so severe a flagellation, that, in the com- 
mon anxiety to avoid it, they plunge together in one 
feathered mass, overwhelming the weaker, and often 
threatening them with instant suffocation. 

We must not, however, confine ourselves to the mental 
hygiene of youth alone. Age also requires our attention, 
and the decline of life may have its comfort and enjoy- 
ment lengthened and promoted by proper care. The 



Hygiene. 213 

^^ grand climacteric," or period of culmination^ varies in 
different individuals, families; tribes, nations, and races. 
The duration of each separate organism depends upon a 
law impressed on the original germ. Vegetables, the 
lower animals, and man alike offer these diversities. A 
flowering shrub shall last its single season, and ^^be 
resolved into the elements;'^ while the sturdy oak, and 
the olive, tarde crescens, shall last for generations, and 
the baobab bid defiance to centuries. The bright butterfly 
shall flutter through its few hours of love and joy, and 
the raven croak, for two hundred years, his hoarse notes 
of complaint amidst the tempest. The Teuton, English- 
man, or American reaches, as did the ancient Hebrew, 
his threescore and ten, or, " by reason of strength," lingers 
through a few additional circles of the sun; while, if 
Riley and other travelers speak truly, the modern Arab 
of the desert, and the native of interior Africa, and the 
Russian serf, do not complete their term under a century 
or two. But, whenever the man begins to de.cline, his 
unity, so strongly insisted on by Feuchtersleben, declines 
altogether — mind and body — and we must submit to the 
inexorable necessity. 

The question as to the period is a highly complicated 
one. The brain, fully developed at twenty-five, shows 
very seldom any tokens of wear or atrophy before sixty. 
Up to this time the memory continues retentive, and the 
ripened judgment more than counterbalances the impair- 
ment of quickness of perception and apprehension. From 
19 



214 Hygiene. 

fifty to sixty-five^ then^ unless some defect of constitution, 
original or accidentally impressed, Lave injured the indi- 
vidual, we may consider the man as the more perfect unit. 
A lustrum or two beyond sixty may be fairly given here, 
if we are right in supposing his stock of experience and 
his wisdom, depending as it does, on the maturity of 
prudence, and the acquisition of self control, to be at their 
maximum at that age. He will not lose all this suddenly 
or hastily. 

It has become more important to understand this topic 
of superannuation, because, in our democratic country, 
we are inclined to shelf our seniors as soon as they begin 
to show the symptoms of advancing age. Nothing can 
be more unreasonable. We are willing to trust men 
with power at a much more dangerous period, when they 
are as distant, on the premature ascent, from the height, 
as they will be after many years of decline. I say more 
dangerous, for, as they grow older, they will become more 
guarded and cautious. Much may be urged in defence 
of our Nestors of the henchj especially ] but this is not the 
place nor the occasion. Meanwhile, I entreat my readers 
to enlist themselves on the conservative side of this 
question, and reserve the gray head for counsel, entrust- 
ing enterprise and progress to the younger hand. 

All authors advise the old against unduly vehement 
intellectual efi'orts. It is rare to find them stand in need 
of such advice. Nature, except in morbid cases, requir- 
ing the aid of therapeutics rather than the safeguard of 



Hygiene. 215 

hygiene, when she takes away power removes propensity. 
But it is a matter of the most earnest inquiry, how we 
shall longest preserve our full capacities of thought. It 
involves a consideration of the whole method of living — 
all the non-naturals, as they have been absurdly called^ 
air, food, sleep, clothing, and, indeed, every external 
agent which can influence the general system. Let us 
carefully avoid here the bias of any exclusive views, and 
consider these topics in an expansive and philosophic 
spirit. Customs and manners the most strongly contrast- 
ed are found consistent with high mental and bodily 
health. Some men eat flesh abundantly; others, equally 
eminent, are vegetarians. Some drink water only; others 
indulge in the use of wine. Some sleep long and soundly; 
while others rise with the dawn, or trim the midnight lamp. 
Some have lived in open air and sunshine; while others 
retire to seclusion. Some, like Newton, go through their 
^^ patient labor^^ in the solitary cloister; while others, like 
the indefatigable Brougham, are most alert in the bustle 
of constant excitement, social, professional, and political. 
The choice is made instinctively, or sagaciously, by every 
one for himself. The rule must be, as elsewhere, the 
avoidance of excesses of every kind. 

The usual tendency of our countrymen to run into 
extremes is strongly illustrated in our writings on this 
point. Moderation is disregarded on every side. Society 
was at one time in danger of being divided, by a marked 
line^ into sots and water drinkers^ each of these parties 



216 Hygiene. 

being so velicment in their expressions of contempt 
and censure for the moderates; who pretended to mere 
temperance. There is nothing to say for the drunkard ; 
he will say nothing for himself. Nor will it be denied 
that the " teetotaller'^ may live long, and virtuously, and 
usefully; but he will never reach, it is probable, the 
highest pinnacles of mental vigor. We cannot expect to 
find a Shakspeare, a Bacon, or a Milton, a Washington, 
or a Bonaparte, a Watt, or a Fulton, a Johnson, a Gold- 
smith, or a Webster among men fed upon slops, and 
doomed to quench their thirst upon milk and water only. 
But the genius of our country lies in exaggeration. We 
must ^^go ahead'' — extra flammantia moenia mundi. 
There is no resting-place for our unquiet people. No 
principle is worth asserting, with any modification; no 
enterprise worth the undertaking, if it have a limit. 

Vf e Americans coax forward the child at its mother's 
knee; urge with sharp spur the boy at school; stimulate 
in every way the adolescent mind, whether in the field, 
the workshop, or the college class ; and, having succeeded 
in giving every faculty the habit of ceaseless action, we 
find that repose has become impossible or intolerable. The 
ennui arising when exhausted nature can drag on no 
longer, and must come to a stand still, is the fruitful 
parent of vice and debauchery. But the natural man 
always finds enjoyment in rest, alternate with moderate 
action; nay, here, and here only, lies the hope of happi- 
ness — of sound mental and bodily health. To satisfy 



Hygiene. 217 

ourselves that it is, as we assert^ mere matter of liabit, 
let us regard the eiFect of education among the masses at 
home, and contrast their condition with that of masses 
abroad. See the difference between the town boy and the 
young farmer or shepherd; between the New Yorker, 
always in a hurry, and the Charlestonian, ever at leisure ; 
between the Yankee and the Southerner. 

^^Your countrymen ought to be happy,^^ said an ob- 
serving foreigner, an admirer of our institutions; ^^but 
they do not look so.^^ It is too true. With faces full of 
anxious eagerness, their breath redolent of one narcotic, 
their cheek distended with another, they hurry to and fro, 
busying themselves not only with their own affairs, but 
with everybody's else ; sympathizing with the grumbling 
Canadian, the insurgent Irishman, the capricious French- 
man, the proud Hungarian; at one moment loudly de- 
nouncing the seizure of an abolitionist and kidnapper at 
the south, and at another applauding, with huzzas as loud, 
the mobbing and lynching of Marshal Haynau by a 
crowd of virtuous administrators of justice from the 
brewers' yards and gin lanes of immaculate London. 

We must here inquire what is the true purport of the 
word mentalj as applied to hygiene ; and why we speak of 
medical psi/cliologi/ in separate phrase. The mind — the 
psychical principle — can we ever regard it properly as 
diseased, in any exclusive sense ? Have we any idea of 
a sound mind but as connected with a sound body, or, 
vice versctj an unsound mind without manifestations of 

19* 



218 Hygiene. 

bodily disorder? Pain, a condition almost synonymous 
with disease^ is it not essentially a morbid perception? 
And perception — ^' a conscious sensation'' — is it not an 
act or function simply mental ? 

" Matter and spirit/' says Feuchtersleben, '^when they 
are united to form body and mind, can no longer be con- 
sidered otherwise than as unity/^ Mental hygiene^ then, 
must be taken to denote a mere branch of the general 
topic, in no mode or form capable of being treated sepa- 
rately or exclusively. All bodily changes affect the 
great psychical principle within us, in some manner, more 
or less. It is impossible to say which acts on the other, 
in the first instance. We cannot tell whether, for ex- 
ample, the primary instinct shows itself by the desire of 
food, which, implanted in the sentient part of the new- 
born animal as a force necessary for self-preservation, 
arouses the digestive apparatus, and so brings about the 
physical movements appended to normal appetite; or 
whether the organic condition of the stomach itself 
creates desire, a mental state, followed by acts conducive 
to its gratification. The former suggestion seems most 
probable. Physical changes require more time than 
mental impulses. Capacities or inclinations lie dormant; 
affinities rouse them. The odor or touch of the mother's 
breast, and its sweet bland flow, awaken the suscepti- 
bility, and volition follows perception. The unit, to use 
the phrase of our German, must be developed as a unit. 
Organs require to be brought into action by appropriate 



Hygiene. 219 

excitants which affect their sensitiveness; they remain in- 
dolent and imperfect^ if not thus stirred and solicited. 
Hence it is that idiots of the lowest grade are not compe- 
tent even to those functions most emphatically pronounced 
instinctive ; they fail in the co-ordination of movements 
that must be associated to effect a purpose. I knew a 
little creature which, during the seven years of its mise- 
rable, but little more than vegetable life, had only uttered 
inarticulate, discordant, and abrupt cries; always swal- 
lowed with painful and menacing difficulty, as if about to 
suffocate; had never made a motion for any apparent 
object, and whose limbs and trunk, whenever moved at 
all, were agitated irregularly and convulsively. 

The brain, the great organ through which mind mani- 
fests itself, is subject to the universal physiological laws 
of growth and conformation. Here, then, we must begin 
our study of '^ mental hygiene f' this is the threshold of 
" medical psychology.''^ All the influences so industri- 
ously traced out by modern philanthropists as impressing 
malignantly the bodily health of the masses, exert their 
power here also. Want of air, light, and proper food 
give rise to idiocy, in its several grades, as well as to scro- 
fula and typhus. Toynbee tells us that deafness is " fre- 
quently connected with early scrofula; this inlet of percep- 
tion closed, the deaf mute seldom reaches full mental de- 
velopment. All the world knows the coincidence of goitre 
with cretinism, a familiar form of idiocy; but goitre is, if 
not scrofulous, closely allied in nature and contingencies 



220 Hygiene. 

of causation. When any portion of brain is absolutely 
absent, we have no resource ; and if all idiocy were struc- 
tural, the case would be desperate. But the contrary is 
now well known, not only from anatomical observation, 
but from the results of well-directed attempts to nourish, 
arouse, and, by proper stimuli, develop the dormant, and 
therefore imperfect, organ. The name of Gruggenbiihl, 
harsh to our half Saxon ears, is euphonious to the very 
heart of humanity and of heaven, as that of the man 
who first had the boldness to conceive the possibility of 
educating Cretins, and the glory of success, by persevering 
personal labor. 

The general and uncomplicated idiocy, so often met with 
everywhere, has since engaged the attention of many phi- 
lanthropists. The plan of treatment followed illustrates 
the principle with which we set out. The patient is well 
fed, well lodged and clad. His senses are educated in all 
their susceptibilities. He is taught to imitate actions of 
all kinds; to co-ordinate all connected movements. Un- 
der this course, all improve, more or less; all become more 
human; many advance considerably; a few reach the ave- 
rage standard. Wherever there is improvement, the head 
grows, gets larger and better shaped. This is as certain 
as that the limbs and trunk shall grow with the progress 
of animal or physical life. 

The brain of every variety of the human species has 
an average bulk and weight, which varies at different ages. 
Upon its proportions and symmetry depends the health of 



Hygiene. 221 

the wliole organism, regarding man as a unit. It attains 
its fullest size about the twenty-fifth year generally. There 
are exceptions both ways ; in some, it does not increase, 
it is said, after the sixteenth year. Dr. Spurzheira told 
a distinguished friend of mine that in one person he had 
known it to grow until the age of thirty-five. Atrophy, 
or want of due nourishment of the cerebral mass, exhi- 
bits itself, not only by mental inertness, but also by bodi- 
ly defect. The contrasted condition of hypertrophy, or 
undue development, is one of the causes of precocity. 
This is generally considered a dangerous condition, and 
such it is if artificially induced by stimulating the ten- 
der organ, or if accompanied by disproportion or want of 
symmetry. But natural precocity is often the result of 
a nicer and better organization, and is then consistent with 
the highest health and the greatest longevity. Many of 
the most eminent men that ever lived, and some of the 
oldest, have been remarkable for early mental and bodily 
activity. 

Our doctrine of the unity of the human organism re- 
quires that abstinence from intellectual exertion shall be 
enjoined in all states of bodily debility and disorder. 
This is clear enough; but we must inquire what condition 
is most favorable to the action of the mind. Under what 
contingencies shall we thinh to most purpose ? Habits 
being readily formed, it is incumbent on us to begin early 
the training of youth to think well, safely, and efficiently. 
^^As thought impedes digestion,'' says Feuchtersleben, 



222 Hygiene. 

^^so does digestion impede thought/^ Therefore, we must 
not study upon a full stomach. Again, ^Hhe habit of sitting 
while in thought has at least as much share as the habit 
of thinking itself in the difficulty of breathing and ab- 
dominal plethora so frequent among students.^' But he 
goes on to warn us that '^ muscular action also impedes 
thought ;^^ and his countryman Kant, the most profound 
of thinkers, observes that " intense thought fatigues much 
more in the act of walking than at other times/' But 
^^it was while walking in the fields and groves that Aris- 
totle imparted his instructions ;'' and Socrates also, in defi- 
ance of the fatigue of hard thinking, and talking, and 
walking altogether, ^^ had no fixed place for his lectures, 
instructing his pupils sometimes in the groves of Acade- 
mus, sometimes on the bank of the Ilissus.^' 

On the whole, then, we may infer that excess and unfit- 
ness are the true evils to be avoided, the true obstacles 
to successful study. A child must not be put or kept to 
his lessons when tired or sleepy, when just satiated with 
food, or when hungry. Perhaps for physical reasons, 
comprising the suspension of distracting voluntary motion 
and the fuller supply of blood to the brain, a recum- 
bent posture is best fitted for close, continued, and severe 
thought. But we should not trouble the young student 
with these niceties. Beyond what has just been 
stated, neither time, place, nor any other contingency 
should be allowed to interfere with the employment of the 
faculties necessary to the development of the perfect man. 



Hygiene. 223 

Much has been said of the influence of diet upon the 
mental health and the character. National and tribal ha- 
bitS; as to food, are coincident with so many other agencies 
that we cannot easily appreciate their effects ; but it is 
evident that the human unit must be affected, as well in 
the composition of his brain, as of his muscles and skin, 
by the elements of his customary nutriment. We can 
hardly be said, as yet, to have any national cookery, al- 
though pies prevail in Connecticut, and hoe-cakes in Vir- 
ginia ; still there seems to be, in the modes of living in 
different sections of our country, some relevancy to local 
character — the cool calculating deliberation of the more 
vegetarian masses of the North contrasting fairly with the 
warmth and impulsiveness of the flesh-consuming South- 
erner. 

Pythagoras, the first of the Greek philosophers who 
practiced medicine, must be honored as the earliest found- 
er of a system oi psychical dietetics. Feuchtersleben gives 
us from Meiner, ^^as a specimen of mental diet,'^ an ex- 
tract from the Pythagorean ^^ order of the day,'^ from 
which I condense. ^' The morning was spent in walking 
in the retired grove or quiet temple, to refresh the senses, 
compose their minds, and prepare for daily business. It 
was dangerous levity to consort with others before they 
held communion with themselves. Music assisted to 
dispel the mists of sleep, and attune the soul to activity. 
Their early walk ended, they met and devoted the cheer- 
ful hours to teaching and learning. Conversation was sue- 



224 Hygiene. 

ceeded by gj^mnastic exercises, running, wrestling, throw- 
ing heavy weights at a mark, or dances in which all 
parts of the body, especially the hands, were thrown into 
violent motion. Then they repaired to dinner, or rather 
a very simple breakfast, at which they took neither meat 
nor wine; eating, during the whole day, only so much bread 
and honey as was necessary to satisfy appetite. They 
walked in the evening, in small parties, conversing; then 
repaired to the bath, after which they assembled before 
supper. Their suppers were always finished before sun- 
set, beginning with libation and sacrifice. No larger num- 
ber than ten sat together; they ate moderately of meat 
and vegetables, and indulged sparingly in wine. On 
breaking up for the night, they discoursed of the duties 
of life, and the rules of the order, and when they lay 
down to sleep, relaxed their minds with reflection, and the 
harmonies of the lyre.^^ Oh ! fortunati nimium I 

We can scarcely find, among the various treatises on 
these several points, one which is free from a defect which 
has done much harm by drawing down contempt upon the 
whole inquiry. In them all, v/e are struck with the dis- 
position to uncompromising exclusiveness on the one 
hand, the result of a habit of limited observation ; or, on 
the other, to an unphilosophically minute interference, indi- 
cative of an equally narrow dogmatism. It would seem 
to be generally overlooked or forgotten that nature is far 
from being restricted or uniform in any of her modes of 
action, or their products. An almost indefinable variety, 



Hygiene. 225 

resulting in tlie richest harmony and beauty, is presented 
in all her works. The elements employed in her opera- 
tions, especially in the animated kingdoms, are infinitely 
numerous — their combinations infinitely diversified. Her 
agencies, unlike those of human mechanism, bring out 
individualities everywhere, analogies in profusion, and re- 
semblances ; but reproduce identities nowhere ; nowhere 
give rise to precise repetition. When causes seem the 
same, results differ. The leaves of the same majestic oak, 
expanded by the same vital force of vegetation, supplied 
by the same sap, in contact upon the same stem, are not 
any two of them exactly alike in length or breadth, or 
shape, or weight, or shade of color. The offspring of 
the same parents in the animal world, however numerous, 
born under whatever similarity of contingencies, all of 
them present special peculiarities of shape and appear- 
ance, which separate each from every other, and distin- 
guish them in an indefinite diversity of modes. The con- 
stitution both of body and mind is universally diverse ; 
no two are so nearly identical, or approximate so closely, 
as to be mistaken or exchangeable one for the other, their 
whole history being known. Nay, with all the symmetry 
of our conformation, the parts of no individual are pre- 
cisely alike upon the opposite sides of the body, but a dif- 
ference will be found to exist between the right and left 
eye and ear, cheek and brow. 

In this, art seems irreconcilably contrasted with nature^ 
20 



226 Hygiene. 

jet it is, perhaps, after all, only seeming. The elements 
with which art carries on her operations are few; the 
agents of causation employed by her are palpable, their 
action obvious, and its results calculable and uniform. 
The data, if not all ascertained clearly, are all within our 
cognizance, and require only to be carefully observed and 
correctly estimated. The problems of all art are, there- 
fore, soluble. Now, if the elements of natural causation 
were equally limited and notable, the effects of their ac- 
tion would be alike calculable. Nay, if the data were 
definitely ascertained, no matter how numerous or exten- 
sive, the powers of our expansive intellect would be, I doubt 
not, equal to the task, however difficult, of predicting the 
results — of solving the complicated and interesting ques- 
tions offered to our consideration. But it is not so; 
nor can we at present indulge the hope that it will ever 
be ; and we should promptly learn from this admission a 
lesson of humility. We can only approximate the truth, 
and we are bound to be cautious as to the mode in which 
we seek it. Let us perpetually endeavor to grasp the 
largest number of known or cognizable elements ; to ex- 
tend our views over the widest horizon. The basis of our 
hygienic doctrines must be broadly laid, in a knowledge 
of the laws of physiological or healthy normal life ; but a 
very large share of our reasonings in regard to these is 
of the d posteriori character, and deduced from observa- 
tion of the evil effects of such agents as derange and hurt 
us. If we are not prudent, we shall be led astray from 



Hygiene. 227 

the outset, by according undue weight to a few facts or 
phenomena — the limited statistics of a narrow range of 
observation. 

Look, for example, at the multitudinous treatises on 
Dietetics, issued annually from the press ; and note how 
dogmatically the interest of each is made to turn upon its 
exclusiveness — the originality or characteristic peculiarity 
of the system advocated in it. A fierce attack is made 
upon some article or articles of diet, which it is contended 
must be absolutely prohibited or avoided, notwithstand- 
ing the known fact that masses of men, vigorous, hardy, 
and long-lived, are accustomed to subsist mainly or en- 
tirely upon such substances. Animal food has thus been 
denounced again and again by theorists, fanatics, and 
pseudo-philosophers. Rice, the sustenance of millions, has 
been accused of many evil tendencies ; of originating a 
disposition to blindness ; of generating malignant cholera. 
Milk itself, nature's choicest, richest, most elaborate, and 
most delicate pabulum, is every now and then assailed as 
deleterious by some eccentric or misled observer, who 
hastily ascribes to it certain new or ill-understood dis- 
orders, the very obscurity of which renders it easy for 
him to attract disciples. 

A similar spirit of exclusive and narrow interference is 
shown in relation to the various modes of preparing food. 
There was a time when children were allowed to eat cher- 
ries, on the express condition that they should swallow the 
stones after the soft pulp and luscious juice ; so, of late, men 



228 Hygiene. 

have contended that we must take the husk or bran al- 
ways mixed with the white and delicate farina. One will 
not loosen the tenacity of the doughy mass with fermenta- 
tion of any kind, but prefers an unleavened morsel ; while 
another, Tiorresco referens^ mingles medicinally some cor- 
rective alkaline with the neutral culinary salt, which in- 
stinct and habit lead us to employ. One prates of sim- 
plicity, rejecting all appliances of art, and all resources of 
scientific cookery; and some even condemn the application 
of fire itself as injurious and unnatural. But the Abys- 
sinian, who cuts his raw and bloody steak from the living 
animal ; the Englishman, boasting of his juicy sirloin, 
and his leaden pudding; the Frenchman, perpetually 
inventing new combinations, and adroit alike in the bat- 
tery of war and of the kitchen — all these exult equally 
in the enjoyment of luxuriant health. So also do the 
Indian rice-eater, and the poe-devouring Sandwich Islander, 
on the one hand ; and on the other, the Tartar, the Ca- 
manche, and the Western trapper, who, subsisting of ne- 
cessity upon animal matters alone, know not the need of 
bread or any form of vegetable aliment. 

Herodotus tells us an instructive story on this subject. 
The country of the Macrobians, .whose name, I need not 
remind my readers, is expressive of their longevity, was 
reputed to possess vast quantities of gold. Attracted by 
this report, Cambyses, the Persian monarch, sent thither 
certain ambassadors as spies, bearing presents of robes, per- 
fumes, and wine. Of these, they only retained the latter, 



Hygiene. 229 

finding it a very agreeable novelty. One of them inquired 
how long the Persians lived, and what they ate. He was 
answered that their greatest age was eighty years, and 
that they lived upon what they called ^^ bread/' a mass of 
crushed pulse, and the like. On this, he remarked that he 
did not wonder at their living no longer, who fed upon 
such rubbish, and that probably they would not live even 
so long, if it were not for the wine they drank. Being 
then asked how long the Macrobians lived, and what 
formed their subsistence, he replied, one hundred and 
twenty years and more, and that their food was boiled 
flesh and milk. 

But the details of this branch of my subject are 
interminable, and I must proceed to offer one or two 
suggestions as to the regulation of the personal conduct 
— the general course of life, of the individual. In the 
formation of such a code of laws, we must consult the 
constitution of our nature, which can never be violated 
with impunity. This doctrine, founded in most unques- 
tionable truth, has been pressed to an absurd extreme by 
some of our modern philosophers, who lay down uncom- 
promisingly the dogma, ^4hat disease is unfailing evi- 
dence of wrong-doing/' as some mildly express it; ^^sy- 
nonymous with guilt,'' say others, tersely; or, as I once 
heard a reverend English radical, of noble birth, declare, 
with harsh emphasis, ^^all ill health is sin !'' It is not a 
correct sentiment, in any point of view. As to the sub- 
ject himself, he may be the passive recipient of morbid 

20* 



230 Hygiene. 

impressions, accruing from irresistible predisposition, 
obscure contingencies of local residence, geographical 
position, occupation, &c., unforeseen and perhaps accu- 
mulating silently and secretly. His ancestor may have 
been, and thus he may become, the victim of inevitable 
contingencies, which effect the formation and transmis- 
sion of hereditary maladies, as cancer, scrofula, insanity. 
We suffer often in masses from providential afBietions, 
for the causes or consequences of which we are no more 
answerable than for the sweep of the tornado, or the con- 
vulsions of the earthquake; such as the invasion of epi- 
demics, the inundation of malaria, and the contagious 
propagation of many forms of wide-wasting pestilence. 

But while we thus denounce the unwarrantable as- 
sumptions of which I have spoken, we must not lose 
sight of the instructive truth which lies beneath the 
mass of error exposed. Striking instances will at once 
present themselves in the long list of ineffable sufferings 
from gross gluttony and revolting intemperance. An 
almost infinite series, less obvious but equally dependent 
upon diverse forms of mere self-indulgence, and habits 
of scarcely noted excess, might be brought forward and 
clearly made out upon examination. 

Addressing the adolescent as in a great measure the 
controller of his own future destiny, we should earnestly 
inculcate upon him the value of moderation in all things, 
nay, of a reasonable self-denial. Let each one for him- 
self consider the influence of the several modes of living ; 



Hyqiene. 231 

let liim regard the results, let him closely investigate the 
tendencies, and shape his course accordingly. Teach 
him that physical wrong-doing, whether voluntary or in- 
voluntary, reckless or accidental, will and must be 
attended by a physical penalty^ this may be sooner or 
later in coming, but it will and must come. Effect will 
follow cause. The avoidance of excess in every shape 
is essential both to happiness and virtue; all forms of 
riot are fatal to both. We cannot always trace the links 
of the chain which unite consequences with the causative 
agencies. Some of the modes of incorrect conduct 
produce immediate and cognizable results; others are 
more remote than the long planted seed of the early 
winter from the ripe grain of the succeeding summer ; 
others still it is not in our power to pursue at all in the 
individual, their consequences being deducible only in 
masses by calculation of general health or of proportional 
longevity. But the nature of any agent or habit being 
once made out, and its tendency ascertained, we are 
plainly directed in our course by reference to it. Mithri- 
dates, as we are told, had rendered himself, by frequent 
use, insusceptible to the action of all poisons known in 
his day. Yet none of us would envy the king of Pontus 
his acquired insensibility to the most potent drugs. It 
is not long since an East Indian was shown who could 
swallow a drachm of corrosive sublimate without injury ; 
and some of the Theriaki of Turkey and China take, 
not only unhurt but with delightful exhilaration, many 



232 Hygiene. 

grains of solid opium^ or an ounce of laudanum^ or in- 
hale clouds of the dreamy vapor of the dried poppy-juice 
burnt in the pipe. Does not this tolerance of active 
medicaments imply — do we not habitually draw the infer- 
ence in our pathology and therapeutics — a state of serious 
disease ? 

Our reason is satisfied when we have ascertained, not 
the mere preponderance of evil over good, for that is apt 
to be a difficult and doubtful question, but the specific 
quality and the substantial tendency of an agent to evil; 
and this must always be decided on as fair ground for 
absolute condemnation. Temperance is a difi'erent thing 
altogether, and relates to the proportional employment of 
substances not in their own nature deleterious, but inju- 
rious only in excess. The limits which it comprehends 
can be expressed in terms, neither by the law of the 
land nor the moral law, but must be determined by 
every one for himself. 

Nor should we lose sight of the ultimate and heredi- 
tary influences of a continuance of bad or doubtful habits 
in successive generations. '^The fathers have eaten sour 
grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.'' 

The seeming harshness of the natural law above an- 
nounced is tempered somewhat by its certainty and 
uniformity, and the absence of all necessity, in the great 
majority of instances, that we should subject to any of 
its penalties our coming posterity. It is in this way that 
temperaments are built up, and predispositions to disease 



Hygiene. 233 

originate; topics of great importance in the discussions of 
Hygiene. When men arrive at the perfection of reason, 
but not till then, they will govern themselves by the 
considerations thus suggested. In the meanwhile, it is 
the duty of our profession to urge them on all fit occa- 
sions, and thus to modify, if we cannot control, the con- 
duct of those whom we advise; to approximate, as nearly 
as may be, the good we cannot absolutely attain. 

It would be, however, very absurd to lay down precise 
rules of living, as to diet, exercise, occupation, sleep, and 
so on, for the government of all men. As well fit all 
men with the same suit of clothes. Our capacities difi'er 
infinitely, both for action and enjoyment, and it surely 
cannot be doubted that the Creator intended all our 
faculties to be filled to the utmost. But how shall we 
know what they are, under a uniform system of uni- 
versal ascetic repression ? 

When we lay down the well-defined rule, that excess 
impairs and diminishes them, and instruct men in the 
tokens by which they shall know when they commit ex- 
cess, if indeed a primary instinct, a sort of physical con- 
science be not, as I fully believe, amply sufiicient, we 
have done all that can be done to guard the young and 
inexperienced. He who will not obey the admonitions 
of nature — the never-failing warnings always given 
promptly and kindly in the first instance, but soon with- 
held or suppressed if not attended to — will surely refuse 



234 Hygiene. 

submission to any conventional regulations until it is too 
late to avail himself of them. 

Thus it is that we find the advocates of exclusive modes 
of living in every form belonging, with few exceptions, to 
the catalogue of confirmed invalids; the exceptions usually 
occurring among persons known as whimsical and eccen- 
tric, some of whom perhaps (and to this remark I would 
solicit attention) may be following certain obscure inti- 
mations from Nature herself; who, if I may employ such 
language, seems occasionally aware of departures from 
normal life and ordinary susceptibility, and suggests de- 
partures from ordinary modes of living thereby rendered 
necessary. Yvhether we should indulge these caprices 
or endeavor to control or restrain them, I shall not now 
stop to inquire, the discussion properly belonging to 
Pathology rather than Hygiene, from the very supposi- 
tion of a morbid state of the individuals referred to. 

Let me be clearly understood as recommending, in the 
rules I have offered, no effeminate shrinking from a fair 
and rational contest with external circumstances. I ad- 
mire, with all other readers, the heroic constancy with 
which Parry and Ross, Franklin and Richardson, bore 
the intense cold of the Arctic regions, which they invaded 
for high objects. I admire the patient endurance, the 
martyr spirit of Park and Landor, Denham and M' Wil- 
liam, in their exploration of the pestilential wilds of 
burning Africa. Without this spirit of conquest, the 
higher tribes of our race would have been confined to 



Hygiene. 235 

the narrow limits of European civilization. Our western 
star of empire, which now shines over more than half 
the globe, and will soon illumine the shores of every 
sea, would have glimmered as a faint and distant sparky 
or set in early darkness. 

But I would abandon, after due exertion, every un- 
reasonable and hopeless enterprise. I would leave to the 
savage tribes, fitted by the very inferiority of their attri- 
butes, to roam over the wilds of the great American 
deserts of Oregon, of New Mexico, and of California, 
these desolate domains ; I would cease to contend with 
the Bedouin for his torrid sands; and to the African I 
would yield the unmolested enjoyment of his thick man- 
grove jungle, and steaming morass. The sacrifice of life 
and health in the eastern colonies of the British empire, 
in their attempts to fix themselves upon the coast of 
Guinea and the islands of the Western Archipelago, 
and in their commercial explorations of the Niger and 
Tsadda, offer abundant warning of the absolute impossi- 
bility of success in similar projects, and show the insur- 
mountable opposition of climatic influences. Yet the 
energy of our Anglo-Norman character is so irrepressible, 
that I should feel no surprise at learning that an expedi- 
tion was on foot to make a settlement upon the icy pro- 
montories of Boothia Felix, or invade the Abyssinian 
mountains. It is our ^^ manifest destiny'^ to roll our 
restless waves of burning life against every barrier, and 



23G Hygiene. 

to dash ourselves into foam against every obstacle over 
which we cannot sweep in triumph and success. 

Providence has allotted to the several varieties of 
human kind their respective places of abode. In extreme 
instances these allotments are final and unchangeable ; 
the Northern tribes can never make a home upon the 
Gold Coast^ or inhabit the fertile plains of Hindostan; 
nor can the tawny or dark races flourish except under 
the hot sun of the South ; and in the attempt to encroach 
on all debatable territory^ we encounter a host of difficul- 
ties in the deadly pangs of sickness and the tortures of 
fatal disease^ before which, could they be foreseen, or 
properly appreciated, the boldest heart would quail in 
dismay. With the sad history of these, it is the lot of 
our profession to become familiar. 

The acclimation purchased by the suffering of so large 
a proportion among those who survive, and the sacrifice 
of so many who die, is but imperfectly transmitted, too, 
to the offspring of the invaders, whose childhood is a long 
period of susceptibility to similar suffering and risk. For 
all these we must prepare every proper and available 
means of alleviation, and, as far as protection is possible, 
of protection. These, it is foreign to my present purpose 
to treat of: they belong rather to special prophylaxis than 
to general hygiene. 

Among the internal causes which affect human health, 
a very high importance must be ascribed to the Passions. 
It is common among physiologists to divide them into two 



Hygiene. 237 

classes, the stimulant and the depressing • but tliis is an 
error. They are intended always to impel to action, and 
nothing else can be their object and purpose. They 
are all, therefore, of necessity stimulating and exciting. 
What would be the final cause — what the utility of any 
one of opposite character ? All alike spur us to defend, 
preserve, procure, or enjoy. They may be so intense, so 
disproportioned to the physical capacities which they are 
meant to arouse, as to transcend the powers of action and 
endurance; but this is equally true of the pleasurable 
which all regard as stimulant, as it is of the painful which 
are considered depressing. Joy, we know, is quite as 
overpowering as grief. Love, the most delightful of 
them all — what say the poets of it, Catullus, Sappho, 
Moore? the philosophers and pathologists, Montaigne 
and Copland? Of its syncope, impotence, delirium, 
wasting, and decay ! Fear, on the contrary, always se- 
lected and dwelt on as emphatically sedative, often, we 
know, gives strength in resistance or attack, and adds 
wings to flight. " Fear,^^ says Cogan, ^^is the most 
dangerous of the passions. ^^ Cowards fight desperately 
when they cannot run away; and a cornered rat is a very 
respectable antagonist. Hatred, too, the most painful 
among them, is perhaps the one which confers the most 
vehement and most enduring powers of physical exertion. 
Yet I cannot help thinking that the influence of the 
passions has been habitually overrated. It is a very rare 
thing that any one of them shall be directly fatal. A 
21 



238 Hygiene. 

man of apoplectic figure and predisposition may find^ in 
a paroxysm of rage, an exciting cause of attack, as he 
would in exposure to a hot sun, or in stooping to tie his 
shoe-string. A subject of diseased heart may, like John 
Hunter, die suddenly, if rendered furious by contradic- 
tion or insult; but no sound man dies from anger: and 
so of the other passions. When we set down mania in 
men remarkable for violence of temper, as produced by 
it, we mistake effect for cause : or it may be that the two 
are coincident effects of the same cause. 

Thus, also, I regard as apocryphal, generally, the 
histories given us of the immediate morbid effects of the 
passions upon the bodily functions. Peuchtersleben 
quotes from Ideler the statement that '' Tourtual saw a 
child die, as if struck by lightning, after taking the milk 
of an enraged nurse.^^ This seems to be the same story, 
multiplied by transmission, that is quoted by Sweetzer 
from Carpenter, v/ho quotes it from Combe, who quotes 
it from Van Amnion, who does not name the physician 
referred to as the original witness of the fact. He, 
. however, ^^was not called in until after the child^s death, 
and found it lying in the cradle as if asleep, and 
with its features undisturbed, but irrecoverably gone.^^ 
Of the few similar cases met with on record, and just as 
loosely given, their rarity leaves them to be fairly ac- 
counted mere coincidences. What would become of us 
if angry mothers were apt to give quick poison from 
^^ the sacred fountains that nourish the human race V' 



Hygiene. 239 

I am equally incredulous of the ciFect of fear or grief 
in turning the hair gray in a moment^ an hour^ or a single 
night. Yet our German friend speaks of it as ^^a well- 
known phenomenon, a special physical effect of excessive 
grief, when the hair, more or less rapidly, nay, suddenlifj 
turns gray.^^ He also seems to give credit to ^^ the case 
of a woman whose whole body turned blacky on her being 
reproached by her daughter as guilty of murder :'^ an 
incident admirably available to the champions of the 
unity of the human race ! 

Must we not place here, too, the tales of terrible poison- 
ing by the saliva of persons in violent fits of anger, col- 
lected by Good and Wright, and sanctioned by their 
apparent acceptance ? The wounds thus inoculated were, 
of course, greatly lacerated and contused, and inflicted 
with furious violence ; contingencies which account for the 
fatal accidents, rare comparatively in number, which have 
sometimes followed. 

But no one will deny or question the influence of pro- 
traded states of passion upon the system and all its 
functions. Secretion is variously affected. Saliva and 
milk will become more or less morbid, very possibly 
poisonous, as in Dunn's curious account of the fasting 
of the Oregon Indians, and the consequent malignity of 
the bites which they inflict; jaundice will occur from grief 
and anxiety ; nutrition will fail, and the hair will become 
gray, where the frame is continuously agitated by fear, 
sorroW; care, hatred, or jealousy. As to the last of these 



240 Hygiene. 

plienomena, in addition to the instance elsewhere quoted 
from Condamine, Dr. Holland's case may be referred to, 
as illustrating the time required for its manifestation. 
"The patient, a robust young German, suffering under 
divers symptoms of cerebral disorder, was so severely 
affected by the continuance of images of a very painful 
kind, and the associations attending them, that his hair, 
in the course of about ten weelcSj changed its color, from 
being nearly black, to a grayish white."" 

Of sympathies and antipathies, I hardly dare to say 
anything, so much requires to be said in order to be in- 
telligible. Many of them seem capricious and causeless; 
but if we knew all the contingent history, it is probable 
that every one might be accounted for. The remem- 
brance of some injury received or menaced; the strong 
impression made by some relation of such injury; the 
consequent dread of evil, so promptly aroused as to appear 
instinctive or spontaneous, will go far to explain the 
curious facts which every one's experience or memory 
has gathered, as every one can contribute his ghost-story 
to the evening's amusement. 

And this reminds me to enter my earnest protest 
against the interference of the commonplace hygienist 
with this time-honored custom. What would the life of 
the young be without these tales of supernatural in- 
terest — these magic-lantern exhibitions of " the night 
side of nature!" If it be objected that "they make 
children afraid of the dark," I reply that it is proper they 



Hygiene. 241 

should be so. What says Sydney Smithy the wittiest of 
philosophers; and most philosophical of wits? "Nature 
speaks to the mind of man immediately, in beautiful and 
sublime language; she astonishes him with magnitude, 
appals him icith darkness^ cheers him with splendor/^ &c. 
In the dark, all liability to error and injury is augmented 
vastly, and the instinct which teaches us, like Ajax, to 
desire light, is a rational one. Fear of darkness should 
be controlled like all other fear, and then we shall call it 
prudence and caution. 

The lamented Brigham, in his "Treatise of the Influ- 
ence of Religion upon Health,^^ has fallen into some of 
these exaggerations, and especially in ascribing greatly 
too much evil to "religious fear.^^ The strange things 
that we witness during what are called " revivals,^^ are 
owing not at all to fear, but to the omnipotent influence 
of sympathy and imitation. Not at all, I think, to fear. 
They never occur, but where numbers are gathered to- 
gether. The profoundest conviction of guilt, the deepest 
terrors of hell, never give rise to convulsion or catalepsy 
in a conversation between the pastor and his convert. 
But let the faces of a multitude shine on each other^ let 
the glances of excited feeling be reflected from eye to 
eye — then let one shriek be heard, or one contortion seen^ 
and universal uproar spreads around. 

The fact that these "exercises,'^ amid their infinite va- 
riety, observe a similar course in the several places where 
they occur, proves the same thing, whether they consist 

21^ 



242 Hygiene. 

in epilepsy, catalepsjj ecstasy, dancing, laughing, scream- 
ing, gyrating, barking, purring, or mewing. Within a 
short distance, the barking and mewing have happened 
in large numbers; most of the others are familiar every- 
where. I once saw a case of ^^the Kentucky jerks,^^ 
which spread so widely over the West. A black preacher, 
an ~elcve of the excellent Blackburn, was seized, while 
holding forth zealously and warmly. Being a very strong 
man, his convulsive motions jerked those who held him 
so forcibly, that they were thrown from side to side; on 
which he apologized very courteously, in the midst of the 
attack, for having hurt them. A Presbyterian church in 
East Tennessee had for its pastor a stern old Scotchman, 
who held all these movements in utter scorn, and de- 
nounced them vehemently from the pulpit. One Sunday, 
while pouring out a stream of eloquent invective on the 
subject, he was himself attacked, violently tossed about, 
and carried home helpless. His flock were terribly scan- 
dalized at the incident, and one of his elders, a grim 
Cameronian, was specially bitter upon the weakness of 
his minister. A few Sundays after, however, to the un- 
speakable consternation of the beholders, this old gentle- 
man also was seized with convulsions, as he gravely 
strode along the aisle towards his pew, reflecting deeply, 
no doubt, upon the feebleness and degeneracy of his fel- 
low-Christians. In all these events, and the examples 
might be greatly multiplied, it will be seen at once that 
fear has no part. The phenomena depend upon a princi- 



Hygiene. 243 

pie in human, or rather animal nature, of exceeding 
obscurity, but most pervading sway. When fully under- 
stood, its workings will explain many of our darkest 
mysteries; including the magical influence of eloquence 
and fine writing, of poetry and music, acting and recita- 
tion, and of mesmerism and other jugglery as well. 

The mental afiection designated nostalgia, or home- 
sickness, is often treated of as a special disease. The 
people of Switzerland are affirmed to be peculiarly subject 
to it; and it has been said to be confined to mountaineers. 
All these statements are erroneous. The Swiss are re- 
markable for their voluntary itinerancy; they are notori- 
ous, to a proverb, for serving as mercenaries everywhere 
in Europe, from the earliest periods of history until now. 
The love of home — whether a distinct passion or not — is 
universally difi'used, and exists as strongly among the 
denizens of plains as anywhere else. The low-country 
Carolinian is as strongly imbued with this virtuous in- 
stinct as the Gael or the Circassian; he is as fondly 
attached to his rice-fields and hunting-grounds as the 
Tyrolese to his Alps. The Chinaman of Canton and its 
flat neighborhood, during his longest peregrinations, rarely 
cuts off his tail, but wears it ever as a pledge and adver- 
tisement of his unchangeable determination to return to 
the ^^ celestial flowery land.''^ Wherever ^^home^^ is 
known, and known as the seat of true comfort; wherever 
men habitually prize 

"Domestic happiness, the only bliss 
Of Paradise that has survived the fall," 



244 Hygiene. 

thence will emigration be rare^ and among the natives of 
that region will nostalgia be frequent. But I am dis- 
posed to think; with Feuchtersleben, that this mental 
condition ^^has been unnecessarily classed among the 
proper psycopathies^ and that we mighty with as much 
reason^ establish an opodemialgiay or longing for foreign 
coiintries.^^ If this latter suggestion be received^ and 
the contrast to the so-called Swiss disease be allowed a 
place in our nosologies^ its locality will be noted^ as a 
permanent and prevailing endemic^ among the down- 
easters; the ^^ universal Yankee nation/^ 

The propensity to suicide has been very generally con- 
sidered by hygienists as a specific disorder of the mind. 
I cannot regard it^ any more than nostalgia^ as ^^ a peculiar 
form of psycopathy/^ to use the phrase of our learned Ger- 
man with the hard name, whose authority is here opposed 
to my views. His ^^ readiness to believe'^ seems pro- 
digious. He tells us, somewhere, that " Garrick, after 
acting Lear, or Othello, passed hours in convulsions.^' 
He says that ^^ in the Spleen Club, in England, two 
members annually had the right to put an end to their 
existence;^' and that ^^a beam ran across one of the 
streets of London, offering such convenience for hanging, 
that some individuals daily suspended themselves from it, 
until it was removed by the police. '^ 

The act of suicide is simply and always the result of 
the extinction of hope — despair of the removal of some 
evil felt to be insupportable. This may be either of 



Hygiene. 245 

moral or physical character; it is much more frequently 
the effect of severe or protracted bodily suffering than 
writers on the subject appear willing to admit. In the 
few authentic instances in which a sudden desire to die 
seems to have taken possession of the mind, it is because 
a formed and cherished wish has suddenly found some 
special facility of gratification, in the suggestion of some 
easy mode of death, or the prompting of some convenient 
evasion. The obscure principle formerly spoken of, call 
it what you will — sympathy or imitation — acts readily 
upon a subject previously overwhelmed or desperate, and 
the catastrophe follows. 

As to the other forms of monomania now so familiarly 
talked of, I am equally skeptical. Well may legislators 
be puzzled with the doctrine that a single faculty, moral 
or intellectual, may be so exclusively diseased, that one 
person shall feel an irrepressible desire to commit adult- 
murder, and another cliild-murder ; a third, laboring 
under pyromania, be irresistibly impelled to set fire to 
something; or, under hieplitomania, to steal something; 
and so forth. Nothing can be more absurd than such an 
assumption, unless it be the influence deduced from it, 
that we are not to punish these irresistible aberrations. 
Eut if the brain be sound in all its other parts, or organs, 
the doctrine maintained expressly by those who have 
imagined this nicely limited change in a mass entirely 
analogous in composition and continuous in structure — 
if the rest of the brain be sound, and all the other mental 



246 Hygiene. 

and moral faculties in the ordinary condition of regular 
activity, let us endeavor to impress them availably, and 
aid them to control the morbid and insane propensity. 
Let us urge strongly upon the criminal or unfortunate 
subject the powerful motives everywhere familiar and 
efficient, encouraging him in the virtuous struggle by the 
hope of reward, and deterring him from guilt by the fear 
of punishment. 

Already, in this early stage of our country's existence, 
we are charged with certain national weaknesses of con- 
stitution and character, which one writer attributes to 
our exceedingly mixed or hybrid origin from various races 
and tribes of men. Among these, the most prominent 
and gravest is a disproportionate liability to insanity. 
Statistical tables before me, of whose accuracy, however, 
I am far from being assured, give the following as at 
least an approximate view of proportions : — 

In Italy, the insane are to tlie whole population as 1 in 2500. 
In France, " " 1 in 1500. 

In England, " " 1 in 1200. 

In the United States, according- to last census, about 1 in 1000.* 

It is not pretended that these statements are absolutely 
precise; all that concerns us is, the question of their 

^ In his account of the Faroe Islands, Panum gives the enormous 
and terrible rate of insanit}^ among the Islanders, of 1 in 100. This 
he ascribes to the "mental tension" produced by this mode of life, 
solitude, and exposures to frequent and destructive storms. 



Hygiene. 247 

comparative accuracy. Copland agrees with those who 
ascribe the larger ratio in England and America to the 
greater intemperance prevailing, and so it may be in part, 
but this will not account for the facts. If we analyze 
the United States census, we find insanity far more pre- 
valent in the most virtuous and best-educated portions of 
our nation. It prevails in a direct ratio with the degrees 
of intelligence and activity which characterize the differ- 
ent sectional populations. In the six New England 
States, the ratio is of one insane person in six hundred 
and eighty; in six southern States, of one in about twelve 
hundred. I am satisfied that the melancholy predomi- 
nance is owing to the unremitting labor, both of mind 
and body, but especially of the former, to which we con- 
demn ourselves, or to which we are condemned by relent- 
less custom. Our ancestors, far wiser in their genera- 
tion, in this respect at least, appointed numerous fasts 
and festivals, holidays, in which religion enjoined and 
habit sanctioned intervals of abstinence from all usual or 
ordinary task work. Health, both moral and physical, 
was thus kept at a higher standard. It cannot be ques- 
tioned that (other things being equal) the duration of 
life would be prolonged by the interposition of such 
restorative periods of relaxation, amusement, recreation, 
repose. But the Englishman and Anglo- American reso- 
lutely deny themselves this delightful luxury of rest, nay, 
I should rather call it, this positive necessary of life ; 
and consume utterly and rapidly their powers by unre- 



248 Hygiene. 

lenting constancy of action. The animal mechanism 
imperatively demands, like all other machinery, its occa- 
sional periods of inaction and readjustment. In this 
relation it is delightful to reflect upon the beneficent in- 
stitution of the Sabbath, that divinely authoritative and 
almost single interruption of the wearisome routine of 
habitual toil; as, even in its present imperfectly observed, 
nay, often sadly desecrated condition, one of the most 
important among the means of promoting the enjoyment 
of health and the prolongation of life. 

On ^^ this sweet day of sacred rest,'^ throughout all 
Christendom, a solemn silence reigns supreme. The 
anvil rings not to the stroke of the hammer ; the deafen- 
ing roar of business is hushed even in our modern Baby- 
lon. The wheels of commerce stand still, or roll with 
abated velocity, and the horrid din of the manufactory is 
suspended. The slave is awhile unfettered; the im- 
prisoned artisan comes forth to the fresh air and the 
bright sunshine; ^Hhe woodman's axe lies free, and the 
reaper's task is done.'^ On this day the standard of 
humanity is advanced, and for one-seventh of his exist- 
ence the rudest boor is comparatively refined, the lowest 
link in the chain of social being somewhat elevated. 
The " human face divine,'^ even of the chimney-sweep, 
unconscious of water except on this periodical jubilee, 
is more or less successfully scoured; the hebdomadal 
beard of the rustic is shaved, and '^ his smooth chin 
shows like a stubble-field at harvest home.'^ Sunday 



Hygiene. 249 

clothes, at any rate better than the working dress, are 
put on, with what an obvious feeling of self-complacent 
satisfaction I the Sunday dinner, better, if possible, than 
the week-day meal of the poorest, is prepared more care- 
fully and eaten more deliberately, in luxurious leisure, 
and with special zest ; the Sunday evening spent in social 
conversation, or music, or religious exercises; and a tran- 
Cjuil sleep follows, unalloyed by the uneasy sense of 
fatigue, and duly preparatory for the toils of the coming 
morning. 

Blessed indeed, and holy, is the Sabbath of rest ; and 
well does it befit the physician, from whom is almost 
entirely withheld the kindly and restorative influence of 
this septenary renovation, and who strongly appreciates 
its value by its loss — well does it befit him to inculcate on 
others its inestimable privileges, and contend for its uni- 
versal observation. But for the wisely-ordained inaction 
and repose of the Sabbath, the unrestrained spirit of 
Mammon, I doubt not, would rule with despotic sway, 
and the lust of gain, glowing with the fervor of a per- 
petually accelerated excitement, would soon reduce to 
dust and ashes all that is bright and gentle in the fair 
fabric of our modern civilization. 

One word more on this topic of Personal Hygiene. 
Americans are accused of a national neglect of the bath. 
We are said to content ourselves — and I speak not now of 
the poor, of the laboring people, but of the middle and 
upper orders, the great masses who claim to have attained 



250 Hygiene. 

a high standard of social refinement — we are said^ and I 
fear with some truth, to content ourselves rather with 
frequent changes of clothing, than with the free use of 
water in ablution^ for which there can be no substitute. 
How far we may be behind our Christian brethren of 
Europe, I will not pretend to pronounce ; the ^^ great un- 
washed'' are affirmed to constitute a numerous body 
among Teutons^ Celts^ and Anglo-Saxons abroad, as well 
as here ; but it is certain that we all compare unfavorably 
with the older races of the East. ^^ The practice of reli- 
gion/' said Mohammed, ^' is founded on cleanliness, which 
is one-half of the faith, and the key of prayer.^^ En- 
joining his followers to be constant in prayer, "before the 
rising of the sun, and before the setting thereof; in the 
hours of the night, and in the extremities of the day; 
when the evening overtaketh you, and when you rise in 
the morning; at sunset, and when you rest at noon,'' 
he strictly directs them to frequency of ablution. " 0, 
true believers 1 when you prepare yourselves to pray, 
wash your faces and your hands, and your heads and 
your feet." " Neither are the Mohammedans," says the 
translator of the Koran (Sale), content with "' bare wash- 
ing; but add also, as necessary points, combing the hair, 
cutting the beard," (a duty of late much neglected among 
us,) "paring the nails, &c." 

In the ordinances of Hindoo law, the Institutes of 
Menu, given us in English by Sir William Jones, there 
is -o-reat attention paid to this matter of personal purifica- 



Hygiene. 251 

tion. Upon the almost interminable list of specifications, 
which canMot be repeated here, we find the Brahmin, 
^^ who desires purity, commanded to wash himself when- 
ever he is going to read the Veda, or sacred volume, and 
invariably before he takes his food/' 

I attribute to this defect of personal nicety, of which 
I am now speaking, many or most of the peculiarities of 
habits and manners that have laid us open to foreign 
criticism — a criticism under whose taunts we wince with 
special and morbid sensitiveness. 

In the advancing settlements of our new country, 
much may be pardoned to the condition and circum- 
stances of the pioneer. But surely, under any contin- 
gencies, a Christian should wash his hands as often as a 
Mussulman or a Hindoo. Cool springs and running 
streams abound almost everywhere in our inhabited terri- 
tory, whether of forest or prairie land, and our chief 
cities are supplied with fountains in royal munificence. 

From neglect of these matters, flows naturally a culpa- 
ble indifierence to the neatness of the clothing, the house, 
the table, and all other domestic arrangements. All 
these points of habit are consistent ; and we can thus 
account for the nuisance of the stained and slippery 
floors of the masticators of tobacco, which offend so many 
of our senses. 

I have left myself very little time or space to treat of 
Municipal or Public Hygiene — the most neglected, yet, 
as it seems to me, the most truly important of all the 



252/ Hygiene. 

departments of political economy. Men have devoted 
time enough, ineffectually, in continuous efforts to relieve 
suffering and punish crime. I do not deny that these 
are proper objects of attention ; but surely, if we can by 
any method j9r^z;e?ii5 crime and suffering, this should be 
our paramount purpose ; and I fully believe that the phy- 
sical destitution of the poor is the chief cause of intem- 
perance, vice, and disease, among them. I fully believe 
that, if one-half the amount expended in hospitals and 
almshouses, prisons and penitentiaries, were appropriated 
with judgment to the care of the physical well-being of 
the wretched class with which these institutions are filled, 
the remaining moiety would be far more than sufficient 
for the necessities that now, with the most unsatisfactory 
results, consume the whole. Extreme poverty, one of 
the saddest and bitterest of curses inflicted by an angry 
Heaven — extreme poverty, the double cause and conse- 
quence of disease, is the most prolific parent of crime. 
Of this, the inquiring moralist may be satisfied hj copious 
testimony. Governments, then, can exercise no function 
of more profound responsibility than that which looks to 
the hygienic condition of the community. In the great 
plagues of Florence and of London, nay, in the modern 
cholera, the multitudes grew violent and reckless ; rob- 
bery and murder stalked fiercely through the desolate 
streets. ^^Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die/' 
became the maxim, as well with the refined sensualist of 
the Decameron, as with the grim ruffians of St. Giles, 



Hygiene. 253 

and the Parisian fauxbourgs. Such demoralization fol- 
lows always upon the heels of pestilence and famine. 

It would be Utopian to imagine that any effort can 
altogether preclude, among men constituted as they are, 
the infliction of this curse of poverty upon the improvi- 
dent and imbecile. But it is possible to diminish the 
number of its victims, and to evade the diffusion of its 
malignant influence beyond the circle of its inevitable 
presence. Policy, as loudly as humanity, demands that 
this should be earnestly attempted. The rich man, in his 
luxurious cabin, may be infected by the ship fever of the 
miserable emigrant in his crowded steerage. Pent up 
within the thronged area of a great city, he will likewise 
suffer from typhus, generated in the lanes and alleys, 
hovels and cellars, among which he must reside, or whose 
pestilential breath he must inhale in passing. The citi- 
zen who will not provide for the enforced purification of 
the streets and houses about him may soon become the 
victim of the miasms eliminated there ; although his own 
proud palace may seem, by its admirable architecture and 
its comfortable appointments, elevated far above the 
sources of such miasms. "We are linked inseparateljr 
together, the rich and the poor, the lofty and the low. 
Our voyage across the great ocean of existence must be 
made in one common bark, wafted by the same favorable 
breezes, tossed by the same rough billows, and wrecked 
in the same rude tempests. '' Nothing human can be for- 
eign from us,'^ whether we regard the affairs of our race 

22^^ 



254 Hygiene. 

with the genial sentiment of the Roman dramatist, or 
look upon them with the cold and calculating eye of the 
selfish voluptuary. 

The hygienic office of government is twofold : it must 
regulate the external relations of the community with 
one strong arm^ while with the other it directs minutely 
the internal police. I will not now enter upon the 
debatable questions of contagion and infection; it will 
suffice here to point out a course of precaution which will 
scarcely offend any reasonable philanthropist. 

1. There are certain diseases which all allow to be 
communicable, importable, transmissible, contagious, or 
infectious. It is clearly not only the right, but the duty, 
of every community to repel the entrance of these, in all 
known or suspected modes of introduction. The ability 
to effect this most desirable purpose may^ nay, it must, 
be imperfect; yet it should be exerted to the utmost. 

2. There are other diseases of which it is doubtful 
whether they possess this property of transmissibleness, 
whether they can be subjects of communication from one 
person or place to another. Observation or experiment 
will show, in reference to these, that one of two things is 
trae or probable. Their foci of prevalence being known, 
intercourse therewith will present the coincidence of their 
appearance in other places, or. it will not. The fact of 
such coincidence being once noted, the duty of the 
authorities is palpable ; while the question is unsettled, 
they should lean to the side of general safety. Let it be 



Hygiene. 255 

left to physicians, whose proneness to differ among them- 
selves is proverbial, and perhaps praiseworthy — let it be 
left to them to split hairs in the tempest of wordy cla- 
mor, drawing vague lines between infection and true 
contagion ; between atmospheres inquinated by foreign 
intermixtures, and poisoned by exhaled viruses; between 
the personal importation of sick bodies, and the concen- 
trated influence of rank fomites : but let the whole pro- 
fession unite, pendente lite, in advising measures of the 
surest precaution. Let them all hold in warning re- 
membrance the changes of opinion which on this subject 
the most distinguished controversialists have acknow- 
ledged. 

8. The quarantine established should be organized in 
precise relevancy to the nature of the case to which it is 
applied. General and indirect measures of prevention 
are both unsatisfactory and oppressive. The restrictions 
imposed on commerce in this way are hard to bear, and 
will scarcely be submitted to at all; unless so arranged as 
to commend themselves openly to reason and justice. In 
reference to persons, let us carefully ascertain the '^latent 
period'' of every form of contagious pestilence, and let 
the traveler be detained only so long as will surely pass 
beyond this period. The present duration which gives 
name to the law is unnecessarily tedious and injurious. 
If an attack of plague or cholera develop itself always 
within eight days after exposure to its source, it will be 
sufficient to sequester a passenger from a foul port twelve. 



256 Hygiene. 

fourteen, or at most sixteen days, when, if unattacked, 
be may be admitted; yet, after personal purification, 
rigidly enforced ; for a man may carry about bim, as at 
tbe celebrated Black Assizes at Oxford, and elsewbere, 
a contagious influence tbat may not affect bimself. As 
to other fomites, ascertain and apply all efficient means 
of disinfecting tbem, and let tbe foul vessel be well and 
tborougbly cleansed. 

4. Sucb quarantine sbould be establisbed upon tbe most 
liberal principles. Tbe unfortunate subjects of restraint, 
sacrifices for tbe time to tbe public safety, sbould be 
treated witb all compatible kindness ; if sick, most amply 
supplied witb every solace, and all possible means of re- 
storation ; if in bealtb, offered every bospitable entertain- 
ment tbat civilization and refinement can bestow. Let 
no niggardly economy prevail. Wbile tbe poorest sbould 
be placed in comfort and ease, tbose to wbom custom bas 
made luxuries necessary sbould be permitted, and aided, 
indeed, to procure all tbat tbey may require. 

If tbese measures sbould be objected to as unduly 
expensive and burdensome upon any community, let tbe 
objector take tbe trouble to calculate and compare tbe 
pecuniary injury, tbe evil, as expressed aritbmetically in 
pounds, sbillings, and pence, of tbe epidemic presence of 
any one pestilence in a commercial city, leaving out of 
consideration tbe anguisb of sickness and loss of life ; let 
bim contemplate tbe distraction, tbe dispersion of tbe 
population, tbe suspension of business, its slow and fear- 



Hygiene. 257 

ful revival, the depreciation of property. Look at New 
Orleans — among all the cities of the world^ the most 
favorably situated for commerce, with the exception only 
of New York (if even New York be excepted) — and ask 
why her population has not increased for the last ten 
years, or has increased so slowly, while the wealth of the 
West, and of this vast continent, has been poured pro- 
fusely into her lap, through the father of rivers, in vain. 
What expenditure efficient for the removal of her insalu- 
brity, or her imputed insalubrity, would not have been 
wisely devoted to that purpose? Who can doubt the 
immediate and prodigious expansion of her wealth and 
population, this burden being once taken from her ? 

The same remarks will apply equally to the last re- 
maining point upon which I am to touch. Among the 
internal sources of disease in every community to which 
hygienic regulations must be directed, I specify, first and 
chiefly, an undue density of population. I lay down the 
rule, as established beyond all doubt or denial, that the 
most crowded cities are in direct ratio the most sickly and 
vicious, and that the most crowded parts of a city are 
most unfriendly to life, to health, and to morals. Thus, 
take examples: Liverpool gives the ratio of 460,000 
human beings collected upon a square mile, one of its 
sections of 105 square yards holding a population of 
12,000. The average age at death is but seventeen 
years; a death occurs annually in every twenty-eight and 
three-fourths ; its entire population spreading at the rate 



258 Hygiene. 

of 138,224 to a square mile. In London, the greatest 
density is at the rate of 243,000 to a square mile, while 
its average spread is less than half as crowded as that of 
Liverpool. Such is the difference of healthfulness, that 
in London the average age at death is set down at twenty- 
six and a half years; while more than twice as many as 
in Liverpool reach seventy years. One of the sections 
of our sister city, Boston, is said to offer the nearest 
approach to the prodigious density of Liverpool, contain- 
between 3000 and 4000 inhabitants, who are crowded 
together at the rate of 441,500 to the square mile. The 
average age of those buried from that section, as well as 
could be ascertained, was thirteen and a half years. The 
average age of deaths in Boston generally is stated at 
twenty- two and two-third years, having deteriorated to 
this low point from twenty-seven and one-fourth years 
within ten years, during which period the population of 
the city had doubled. 

In the great and rapidly growing metropolis of our 
country, as in Liverpool and in Boston, the poor are 
pressed together, in certain sections, to a degree alto- 
gether incompatible with health and life. The cellar 
population of the first-named town has been set down as 
40,000 ; it is probably 25,000 in New York. In the 
very nature of the case, these unfortunate troglodytes 
are deprived of their due supplies of light and air, and 
the results, collected for us in the instructive pages of 
Griscom, are such as may be anticipated. 



Hygiene. 259 

Wg owe to the wisdom and energy of one of our re- 
presentatives in Congress, the Hon. Mr. Grinnell; the 
passage of a recent act, prohibiting the crowding of 
emigrant ships from Europe, carried frequently to an 
extent which offered no faint image of the horrors of the 
middle passage in the slave-trade. To whom shall we be 
indebted for the enactment of a law which shall prohibit 
the residence of more than a given number of persons 
within an allotted space on shore ? Facts show that such 
an ordinance would be no less proper, wise, or humane. 
Such density of population implies all the evils of which 
I have spoken ; want of fresh air, of which each pair of 
lungs requires a large and constant supply, of water, of 
light ; to these negative, adding the positive inflictions of 
perpetual intrusion and disturbance, and the accumulation 
of all shapes of disgusting filth, and all varieties of insa- 
lubrious effluvia. Decency, morality. Nature herself, 
shrink, with loathing and dismay, at the long train of 
physical and moral evils which follow upon the necessities 
— the atrocious but inevitable vilenesses — of this concen- 
tration of frail, wretched, suffering, hopeless, festering 
mortality. After reading over the sickening records in 
the sanitary reports before me, I solemnly avow the 
sentiment, that, to all concerned, the total and prompt 
extermination, by sword or famine, of the miserable 
denizens of the localities above indicated, would be a 
happy alternative. The unutterable pollution, the 
squalor, the anguish, there endured, must make angels 



260 Hygiene. 

weep, and touch with pity the arch fiend himself, whose 
dread abode contains no pang more intolerable, except its 
eternity of despair. 

Some, not indifferent, I trust, but impelled by their 
strong persuasion of the impossibility of finding a remedy, 
would turn from the contemplation of this terrible state 
of things. But the danger and the burden are not les- 
sened by our apathy on the one hand, and on the other 
it is no longer doubtful that much can be done to alle- 
viate them. Let the density of population of every ward 
in every .city be regulated by law, allowing the maximum 
consistent with life and health. Let all arrangement of 
houses, so as to form confined courts, or alleys, or lanes, 
be prohibited, and no one permitted to be so built as to 
prevent in any other a free outlet of air in one direction 
at least ; let all domiciliation in cellars be absolutely for- 
bidden ; these caves are unfit for the residence even of 
domestic animals, and fatal to man. Let a general super- 
vision of domestic architecture be exercised, so as to in- 
sure in every house ventilation and admission of light ; 
let places of shelter, night houses, be erected at the 
public cost, where lodging, under the supervision of the 
police, may be had by the homeless, both at a minimum 
rate of payment, and for pauper vagrants without such 
demand; where temporary seclusion at least, and com- 
parative cleanliness and comfort, shall be placed within 
the reach of every miserable son and daughter and victim 
of civilization. If it be objected that these measures 



Hygiene. 261 

are difficult and involve expense, I reply that nothing 
ought to be regarded as difficult, everything should be 
made possible, and promptly done; no expense should be 
spared that may avail to save us from the abyss of vice 
and wretchedness, on the profound depths of which the 
researches of our English brethren have thrown such 
appalling light. 

Think of the condition of the poor laborers of the 
British cities, of whom so large a proportion have but one 
room to inhabit in common; male and female, children 
and adults, in indefinite numbers, and in all the circum- 
stances of life, by day and by night, sleeping and waking, 
in sickness, and sorrow, and infirmity ! Think of the far 
worse than savage incrustation of all imaginable and 
unimaginable impurity, moral and physical, thence inevi- 
tably arising ! the deep debasement, the total loss of all 
natural feeling, that must ensue ! We have the strong 
testimony of Southwood Smith that ^^not only vice, but 
crime, is here generated in rank profusion. In these 
districts,^^ he tells us, ^^not only pickpockets and thieves, 
the degraded, and the profligate, but, in general, great 
criminals, violent and reckless men, are born and ma- 
tured.'^ 

In an age boastful of its philanthropy, loud in its 
promises of aid to the oppressed, convulsive in its efi*orts 
to raise the lowly, to reform the intemperate, to comfort 
the prisoner, to enlighten the ignorant, surely the claims 
presented in behalf of diseased, frail, sinking, and suffer- 
23 



262 Hygiene. 

ing humanity will not be neglected. At any rate, I am 
proudly confident they will be regarded duly, as they have 
ever been, by our much calumniated but truly benevolent 
profession. 



IDcatl). 



DEATH. 



AS Ihe word Life is employed in a double sense to 
denote the actions or phenomena by which it is deve- 
loped, and the cause of these phenomena, so the old Eng- 
lish word Death is used familiarly to express two or more 
meanings. The first of these is the transition from the 
living to the lifeless or inanimate state — the act, that is, 
of dying ; the second, the condition of an organized body 
which has ceased to live, while organization yet remains, 
and symmetry still displays itself, and the admirable 
structure of its parts is not yet destroyed by decomposi- 
tion, or resolved into the original and primary elements 
from which it was moulded, 

"Before Decay's effacing fingers 
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers." 

23* 



266 Death. 

We occasionally speak of ^^ dead matter'' in the sense 
of inorganic; but this is merely a rhetorical or metapho- 
rical phrase. That which has never lived cannot properly 
be said to be dead. 

In the following essay, I shall use the word chiefly in 
the first of the senses above indicated. It will often be 
convenient to employ it in the second also; but in doing 
so, I will be careful so to designate its bearing as to avoid 
any confusion. The context will always prevent any 
misunderstanding on this point. 

Death may be considered phj^siologically, pathologically, 
and psychologically. "We are obliged to regard it and 
speak of it as the uniform correlative, and indeed the ne- 
cessary consequence, or final result of life; the act of dying 
as the rounding off, or termination of the act of living. 
But it ought to be remarked that this conclusion is derived, 
not from any understanding or comprehension of the rele- 
vancy of the asserted connection, nor from any a priori 
reasoning applicable to the inquiry, but merely a posteriori 
as the result of universal experience. All that has lived 
has died ; and, therefore, all that lives must die. 

The solid rock upon which we tread, and with which 
we rear our palaces and temples, what is it often, when 
microscopically examined, but a congeries of the fossil 
remains of innumerable animal tribes ! The soil from 
which, by tillage, we derive our vegetable food, is scarcely 
anything more than a mere mixture of the decayed and 
decaying fragments of former organic being; the shells 



Death, 267 

and exuvia3, the skeletons, and fibres, and exsiccated 
juices of extinct life. 

The earth itself, in its whole habitable surface, is little 
else than the mighty sepulchre of the past ; and 

"All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings — yet, the dead are there ; 
And millions in these solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep : the dead reign there alone." 

Four millions of Egyptians cultivate the valley of the 
great river on whose banks, amidst the fertilizing dust of 
myriads of their progenitors, there are calculated still to 
exist, in a state of preservation, not less than from four 
hundred to five hundred millions of mummies. The '' City 
of the Tombs'^ is far more populous than the neighboring 
streets even of crowded Constantinople ] and the cemeteries 
of London and the catacombs of Paris are filled to over- 
flowing. The trees which gave shade to our predecessors 
of a few generations back lie prostrate ] and the dog and 
horse, the playmate and the servant of our childhood, are 
but dust. Death surrounds and sustains us. We derive 
our nourishment from the destruction of living organisms, 
and from this source alone. 



268 Death. 

And who is there among us that has reached the middle 
term of existence; that may not^ in the touching phrase of 
CarlylC; ^^ measure the various stages of his life-journey 
by the white tombs of his beloved ones, rising in the dis- 
tance like pale, mournfully receding milestones ? ^' 

^^When Wilkie was in the Escurial/^ says Southey, 
^^ looking at Titian's famous picture of the Last Supper 
in the refectory there, an old Jeronymite monk said to 
him, ^I have sat daily in sight of that picture for now 
nearly threescore years ; during that time my companions 
have dropped off one after another — all who were my 
seniors, all who were my cotemporaries, and many or most 
of those who were younger than myself; more than one 
generation has passed away, and there the figures in the 
picture have remained unchanged. I look at them, till I 
sometimes think that tlieij are the realities, and ice but 
shadows r ^^ 

I have stated that there is no reason known to us why 
Death should always ^^ round the sum of life.'^ Up to a 
certain point of their duration, varying in each separate 
set of instances, and in the comparison of extremes 
varying prodigiously, the vegetable and animal organisms 
not only sustain themselves, but expand and develop 
themselves, grow and increase, enjoying a better and 
better life, advancing and progressive. Wherefore is it 
that at this period all progress is completely arrested ; 
that thenceforward they waste, deteriorate, and fail? 
Why should they thus decline and decay with unerring 



Death. 269 

uniformity upon their attaining their highest perfection^ 
their most intense activity? This ultimate law is equally 
mysterious and inexorable. It is true the Sacred Writings 
tell us of Enoch; ^^whom God took, and he was not;'' 
and of Elijah, who was transported through the upper 
air in a chariot of fire; and of Melchisedek, the most 
extraordinary personage whose name is recorded, ^^ with- 
out father, without mother, without descent : having 
neither beginning of days, nor end of life.'' We read 
the history without conceiving the faintest hope from 
these exceptions to the universal rule. Yet our fancy 
has always exulted in visionary evasions of it, by forging 
for ourselves creations of immortal maturity, youth, and 
beauty, residing in Elysian fields of unfading spring, 
amidst the fruition of perpetual vigor. We would drink, 
in imagination, of the sparkling fountain of rejuvene- 
scence ; nay, boldly dare the terror of Medea's caldron. 
We echo, in every despairing heart, the ejaculation of 
the expiring Wolcott, ^^ Bring back my youth !" 

Reflection, however, cannot fail to reconcile us to our 
ruthless destiny. There is another law of our being, not 
less unrelenting, whose yoke is even harsher and more 
intolerable, from whose pressure Death alone can relieve 
us, and in comparison with which the absolute certainty 
of dying becomes a glorious blessing. Of whatever else 
we may remain ignorant, each of us, for himself, comes 
to feel, realize, and know unequivocally that all his capa- 
cities, both of action and enjoyment, are transient, and 



270 Death. 

tend to pass away ; and when our thirst is satiated^ we 

turn disgusted from the bitter lees of the once fragrant 

and sparkling cup. I am aware of Parnell's offered 
analogy — 

" The tree of deepest root is found 
Unwilling most to leave the ground ;" 

and of Eush's notion^ who imputes to the aged such an 
augmenting love of life that he is at a loss to account for 
it^ and suggests, quaintly enough, that it may depend 
upon custom, the great moulder of our desires and pro- 
pensities; and that the infirm and decrepit ^^love to live 
on, because they have acquired a habit of living/^ His 
assumption is wrong in point of fact. He loses sight of 
the important principle that Old Age is a relative term, 
and that one man may be more superannuated, farther 
advanced in natural decay at sixty, than another at one 
hundred years. Parr might well rejoice at being alive, 
and exult in the prospect of continuing to live, at one 
hundred and thirty, being capable, as is affirmed, even of 
the enjoyment of sexual life at that age; but he who has 
had his ^^ three sufficient warnings,'^ who is deaf, lame, 
and blind; who, like the monk of the Escurial, has lost all 
his cotemporaries, and is condemned to hopeless solitude, 
and oppressed with the consciousness of dependence and 
imbecility, must look on Death not as a curse, but a 
refuge. Of one hundred and thirty-three suicides occur- 
ring in Geneva from 1825 to 1834, more than half were 



Death. 271 

above fifty years of age; thirty-four^ from fifty to sixty ; 
nineteen, from sixty to seventy; nine, from seventy to 
eighty; three, from eighty to ninety; in all sixty-five. The 
mean term of life in that city being about thirty-five to 
forty, this bears an immense proportion to the actual 
population above fifty, and exhibits forcibly an opposite 
condition of feeling to that alleged by Kush, a weariness 
of living, a desire to die, rather than an anxiety, or even 
willingness to live. 

I once knew an old man of about one hundred and four 
who retained many of his faculties. He could read 
ordinary print without glasses, walked firmly, rode well, 
and could even leap with some agility. When I last 
parted with him, I wished him twenty years more ; upon 
which he grasped my hand closely, and declared he would 
not let me go until I had retracted or reversed the 
prayer. 

Strolling with my venerable and esteemed colleague, 
Prof. Stephen Elliott, one afternoon, through a field on 
the banks of the River Ashley, we came upon a negro 
basking in the sun, the most ancient-looking personage I 
have ever seen. Our attempts, with his aid, to calculate 
his age, were of course conjectural; but we were satisfied 
that he was far above one hundred. Bald, toothless, 
nearly blind, bent almost horizontally, and scarcely 
capable of locomotion, he was absolutely alone in the 
world, living by permission upon a place, from which the 
generation to which his master and fellow-servants be- 



272 Death. 

longed had long since disappeared. He expressed many 
an earnest wish for death^ and declared, emphatically, 
that he ^^was afraid God Almighty had forgotten him.^' 
We cannot wonder, then, that the ancients should be- 
lieve, ^^Whom the Gods love, die young,^^ and are ready 
to say with Southey, himself subsequently, like poor 
Swift, a melancholy example of the truth of his poetical 
exclamation, 

" They who reach 
Gray hairs die piecemeal." 

Sacred history informs us that, in the infancy of the 
world, the physiological tendency to death was far less 
urgently and early developed than it is now. When the 
change took place is not stated; if it occurred gradually, 
the downward progress has been long since arrested. All 
records make the journey of life from the time of Job, 
and the early patriarchs, much the same as the pilgrim 
of to-day is destined to travel. Threescore and ten was, 
when Cheops built his pyramid, as it is now, a long life. 
Legends, antique and modern, do indeed tell us of tribes 
that, like Riley's Arabs and the serfs of Middle Russia, 
and the Ashantees and other Africans, live two or three 
centuries; but these are traveler's stories, unconfirmed. 
The various statistical tables that have been in modern 
times made up from materials more or less authentic, and 
the several inquiries into the general subject of longevity, 
seem to lead to the gratifying conclusion that there is 



Death. 273 

rather an increase of the average or mean duration of 
civilized life. In 1806, Duvillard fixed the average du- 
ration of life in France at twenty-eight years; in 1846, 
Bousquet estimates it at thirty-three. Mallet calculated 
that the average life of the Genevese had extended ten 
years in three generations. In Farr's fifth report (for 
1844), the ^^ probable duration,'^ the ^^expectation of life,^' 
in England, is placed above forty; a great improvement 
within half a century. It is curious, if it be true, that 
the extreme term seems to lessen as the average thus in- 
creases. Mallet is led to this opinion from the fact, 
among others, that in Geneva, coincident with the gene- 
rally favorable change above mentioned, there has not 
been a single centenarian within twenty-seven years ; such 
instances of longevity having been formerly no rarer 
there than elsewhere. 

Birds and fishes are said to be the longest lived of 
animals. For the longevity of the latter, ascertained in 
fish-ponds. Bacon gives the whimsical reason that, in the 
moist element which surrounds them, they are protected 
from exsiccation of the vital juices, and thus preserved. 
This idea corresponds very well with the stories told of 
the uncalculated ages of some of the inhabitants of the 
bayous of Louisiana, and of the happy ignorance of that 
region, where a traveler once found a withered and an- 
tique corpse — so goes the tale — sitting propped in an arm- 
chair among his posterity, who could not comprehend 
why he slept so long and so soundly. 
24 



274 Death. 

But the Hollanders and Burmese do not live especially 
long ; and the Arab, always lean and wiry, leads a pro- 
tracted life amidst bis arid sands. Nor can we thus 
account for tbe lengthened age of the crow, the raven, 
and the eagle, which are affirmed to hold out for two or 
three centuries. 

There is the same difference among shrubs and trees, 
of which some are annual, some of still more brief exist- 
ence, and some almost eternal. The venerable oak bids 
defiance to the storms of a thousand winters ; and the 
Indian baobab is set down as a cotemporary at least of the 
Tower of Babel, having probably braved, like the more 
transient, though long-enduring olive, the very waters of 
the great deluge. 

It will be delightful to know — will Science ever discover 
for us? — what constitutes the difference thus impressed 
upon the long and short-lived races of the organized crea- 
tion. Why must the fragrant shrub or gorgeous flower- 
plant die immediately after performing its function of 
continuing the species, and the pretty ephemeron lan- 
guish into non-existence just as it flutters through its 
genial hour of love and grace and enjoyment; while the 
banyan and the chestnut, the tortoise, the vulture, and 
the carp, formed of the same primary material elements, 
and subsisting upon the very same resources of nutrition 
and supply, outlast them so indefinitely ? 

Death from old age, from natural decay — usually 
spoken of as death without disease — is most improperly 



Death. 275 

termed by writers an euthanasia. Alas ! how far other- 
wise is the truth ! Old age itself is, with the rarest ex- 
ceptions^ exceptions which I have never had the good 
fortune to meet with anywhere — old age itself is a pro- 
tracted and terrible disease. 

During its whole progress. Death is making gradual 
encroachments upon the domain of life. Function after 
function undergoes impairment, and is less and less per- 
fectly carried on, while organ after organ suffers atrophy 
and other changes unfitting it for the performance of offices 
to which it was originally designed. I will not go over 
the gloomy detail of the observed modifications occurring 
in every part of the frame, now a noble ruin, majestic even 
in decay. The lungs admit and vivify less blood; the 
heart often diminishes in size and always acts more slowly, 
and the arteries frequently ossify ; nutrition is impeded 
and assimilation deteriorated; senile marasmus follows, 
^^and the seventh age falls into the lean* and slippered 
pantaloon ;^^ and, last and worst of all, the brain and indeed 
the whole nervous tissue shrink in size and weight, under- 
going at the same time more or less change of structure 
and composition. As the skull cannot contract on its 
contents, the shrinking of the brain occasions a great in- 
crease of the fluid within the subarachnoid space. Com- 
munication with the outer world, now about to be cut off 
entirely, becomes limited and less intimate. The eyes 
grow dim ; the ear loses its aptitude for harmony, and soon 
ceases to appreciate sound ; odors yield no fragrance ; fla- 



276 Death. 

vors affect not the indifferent palate ; and even the touch 
appreciates only harsh and coarse impressions. The loco- 
motive power is lost; the capillaries refuse to circulate the 
dark, thick blood ; the extremities retain no longer their 
vital warmth; the breathing slow and oppressed, more and 
more difficult, at last terminates forever with a deep expi- 
ration. This tedious process is rarely accomplished in the 
manner indicated without interruption ; it is usually, nay, 
as far as my experience has gone, always brought to an 
abrupt close by the supervention of some positive malady. 
In our climate, this is, in the larger proportion, an affec- 
tion of the respiratory apparatus, bronchitis, or pulmonitis. 
It will, of course, vary with the original or constitutional 
predisposition of the individual, and somewhat in relation 
to locality and season. Many aged persons die of apoplexy 
and its kindred cerebral maladies, not a few of diarrhoea ; 
a winter epidemic of influenza is apt to be fatal to them 
in large numbers everywhere. 

When we regard death pathologically, that is, as the 
result of violence and destructive disease, it is evident that 
the phenomena presented will vary relatively to the con- 
tingencies effective in producing it. It is obviously out 
of place here to recount them, forming as they do a vast 
collection of instructive facts, the basis indeed of an almost 
separate science. Morbid Anatomy. 

There are many of the phenomena of death, however, 
that are common to all forms and modes of death, or are 
rarely wanting ; these are highly interesting objects of 



Death. 277 

study in themselves, and assume a still greater importance 
when we consider tliem in the light of signs or tokens of 
the extinction of life. It seems strange that it has been 
found difficult to agree upon any such signs short of mole- 
cular change or putrefactive decomposition, that shall be 
pronounced absolutely certain, and calculated entu-ely to 
relieve us from the horrible chance of premature interment 
of a body yet living. The flaccidity of the cornea is dwelt 
on by some ; others trust rather to the rigor mortis, the 
rigid stiffness of the limbs and trunk supervening upon 
the cold relaxation which attends generally the last mo- 
ments. This rigidity is not understood or explained 
satisfactorily. It is possible that, as 3Iatteucci has proved, 
the changes in all the tissues, chiefly chemical or chemico- 
vital, are the source from whence is generated the ^^ nerv- 
ous force^^ during life; so, after death, the similar changes, 
now purely chemical, may, for a brief period, continue to 
generate the same or a similar force, which is destined to 
expand itself simply upon the muscular fibres in disposing 
them to contract. There is a vague analogy here with 
the effect of galvanism upon bodies recently dead, which 
derives some little force from the fact that the bodies least 
disposed to respond to the stimulus of galvanism are those 
which form the exceptions to the almost universal exhibi- 
tion of rigidity — those, namely, which have been killed 
by lightning and by blows on the pit of the stomach. 
Some poisons, too, leave the corpse quite flaccid and 
flexible. 

24* 



278 Death. 

The researches of Dr. Bennett Dowler, of New Orleans, 
have presented ns with results profoundly impressive, 
startling, and instructive. He has, with almost unequaled 
zeal, availed himself of opportunities of performing au- 
topsy at a period following death of unprecedented prompt- 
ness, that is, within a few minutes after the last struggle, 
and employed them with an intelligent curiosity and to 
admirable purpose. 

I have said that, in physiological death, the natural 
decay of advancing age, there is a gradual encroachment 
of death upon life; so here, in premature death from vio- 
lent diseases, the contrasted analogy is offered of life 
maintaining its ground far amidst the destructive changes 
of death. Thus, in cholera asphyxia, the body, for an 
indefinite period after all other signs of life have ceased, 
is agitated by horrid spasms, and violently contorted. 
We learn from Dr. Dowler that it is not only in these 
frightful manifestations, and in the cold stiffness of the 
familiar rigor mortis^ that we are to trace this tenacious 
muscular contraction as the last vital sign, but that in 
all, or almost all cases we shall find it lingering, not in 
the heart, anciently considered in its right ventricle the 
ultimum moriens, nor in any other internal fibres, but in 
the muscles of the limbs, the biceps most obstinately. 
This muscle will contract, even after the arm with the 
scapula has been torn from the trunk, upon receiving a 
sharp blow, so as to raise the forearm from the table, to 
a right angle with the upper arm. 



Death. 279 

We also learn from him the curious fact that the gene- 
ration of animal heat, which physiologists have chosen to 
point out as a function most purely vital, does not cease 
upon the supervention of obvious or apparent death. 
There is, he tells us, a steady development for some time 
of what he terms "post-mortem caloricity,'^ by which the 
heat is carried not only above the natural or normal 
standard, but to a height rarely equaled in the most 
sthenic or inflammatory forms of disease. He has seen 
it reach 113° of Fahr., higher than Hunter ever met 
with it, in his experiments made for the purpose of excit- 
ing it; higher than it has been noted even in scarlatina, 
112°, I think, being the ultimate limit observed in that 
disease of pungent external heat ; and far beyond the 
natural heat of the central parts of the healthy body, 
which is 97° or 98°. Nor is it near the centre, or at the 
trunk, that the post-mortem warmth is greatest, but, for 
some unknown reason, at the inner part of the thigh 
about the lower margin of its upper third. I scarcely 
know any fact in nature more incomprehensible or inex- 
plicable than this. We were surprised when it was first 
told us that, in the Asiatic pestilence, the body of the 
livid victim was often colder before than after death; but 
this, I think, is easily understood. The profluvia of cho- 
lera, and its profound capillary stagnation, concur in 
carrying off all the heat generated, and in preventing or 
impeding the development of animal heat. No vital 
actions, no changes necessary to the production of caloric, 



280 Death. 

can proceed without the minute circulation which has 
been checked bj the asphyxiated condition of the subject^ 
while the fluids leave the body through every outlet, and 
evaporation chills the whole exposed and relaxed surface. 
Yet the lingering influence of a scarcely perceptible 
vitality prevents the purely chemical changes of putre- 
factive decomposition, which commence instantly upon the 
extinction of this feeble resistance, and caloric is evolved 
by the processes of ordinary decay. 

In the admirable liturgy of the churches of England and 
of Rome, there is a fervent prayer for protection against 
^^ battle, murder, and sudden death.^^ From death uncon- 
templated, unarranged, unprepared for, may Heaven in 
mercy deliver us ! But if ever ready, as we should be 
for the inevitable event, the most kindly mode of inflic- 
tion must surely be that which is most prompt and brief. 
To die unconsciously, as in sleep, or by apoplexy, or 
lightning, or overwhelming violence, as in the catastrophe 
of the Princeton, this is the true Euthanasia. ^' Cassar,^' 
says Suetonius, ^^finem vitse commodissimum, repentinum 
inopinatumque pretulerat.^^ Montaigne, who quotes 
this, renders it, ^^La moins premeditee et la plus courte.''' 
" Mortes repentinge,^^ reasons Pliny, ^^hoc est summa 
vitse felicitas.'^ ^^Emori nolo,^^ exclaims Cicero, ^^ sed 
me esse mortuum nihil estimo.^^ 

Sufferers by various modes of execution were often, in 
the good old times of our merciless ancestors, denied as 
long as possible the privilege of dying, and the Indians 



Death. 281 

of our continent utter a fiendish bowl of disappointment 
when a victim thus prematurely escapes from their inge- 
nious malignity. The coup de grace was a boon unspeak- 
ably desired by the poor wretch broken on the wheel, or 
stretched upon the accursed cross, and forced to linger on 
with mangled and bleeding limbs, amidst all the cruel 
torments of thirst and fever, through hours and even 
days that must have seemed interminable. 

The progress of civilization, and a more enlightened 
humanity have put an end to all these atrocities, and sub- 
stituted the gallows, the garrote, and the guillotine, 
which inflict deaths so sudden that many have questioned 
whether they necessarily imply any conscio'usness of phy- 
sical suffering. These are, however, by no means the 
most instantaneous modes of putting an end to life and 
its manifestations. In the hanged, as in the drowned, 
and otherwise suffocated, there is a period of uncertainty 
during which the subject is, as we know, recoverable ; we 
dare not pronounce him insensible. He who has seen 
an ox ^^ pithed^' in the slaughter-house, or a game-cock 
in all the flush and excitement of battle ^^ gaffed'^ in the 
occiput or back of the neck, will contrast the immediate 
stiffness and relaxation of the flaccid body with the pro- 
longed and convulsive struggles of the decapitated bird, 
with a sort of curious anxiety to know how long and in 
what degree sensibility may linger in the head and in 
the trunk when severed by the sharp axe. The history 
of the guillotine offers many incidents calculated to throw 



282 Death. 

a doubt on the subject^ and the inquiries of Seguret and 
Sue seem to prove the existence of post-mortem passion 
and emotion. 

Among the promptest modes of extinguishing life is 
the electric fluid. A flash of lightning will destroy the 
coagulability of the blood as well as the contractility of 
the muscular fibre; the dead body remaining flexible. A 
blow on the epigastrium kills instantly with the same 
results. Soldiers fall sometimes in battle without a 
wound ; the impulse of a cannon-ball passing near the pit 
of the stomach is here supposed to be the cause of death. 
The effect in these two last instances is ascribed by some 
to ^^a shock given to the semilunar ganglion^ and the 
communication of the impression to the heart ;'^ but this 
is insufficient to account either for the quickness of the 
occurrence^ or the peculiar changes impressed upon the 
solids and fluids. Others are of opinion that the whole 
set of respiratory nerves is paralyzed through the violent 
shock given to the phreniC; '^ thus shutting up/^ as one 
writer expresses it, ^Hhe fountain of all the sympathetic 
actions of the system.^' This hypothesis is liable also 
to the objections urged above; and we must acknowledge 
the suddenness and character of the results described to 
be as yet unexplained^ and in the present state of our 
knowledge inexplicable. 

On the field of battle, it has been observed that the 
countenances of those killed by gunshot wounds are usually 
placid; while those who perish by the sword, bayonet, 



Death. 283 

pike, or lance, ofifer visages distorted by pain, or by emo- 
tions of anger or impatience. Poisons differ much among 
themselves as to the amount and kind of suffering they 
occasion. We know of none -which are absolutely free 
from the risk of inflicting severe distress. Prussic acid 
gives perhaps the briefest death which we have occasion 
to observe. I have seen it, as Taylor states, kill an ani- 
mal, when applied to the tongue or eye, almost before the 
hand which offered it could be removed. Yet in the case 
of Tawell, tried for the murder of Sarah Hart, by this 
means, there was abundant testimony that many, on 
taking it, had time to utter a loud and peculiar scream of 
anguish; and in a successful attempt at suicide made by 
a physician of New York city, we have a history of 
appalling suffering and violent convulsion. So I have 
seen in suicide with opium, which generally gives an easy 
and soporose death resembling that of apoplexy, one or 
two instances in which there were very great and long- 
protracted pain and sickness. 

Medical writers have agreed, very generally, that ^Hhe 
death-struggle,' ' ^^the agony of death,'' as it has long 
been termed, is not what it appears, a stage of suffering. 
I am not satisfied — I say it reluctantly — I am not satisfied 
with these consolatory views, so ingeniously and plausibly 
advocated by Wilson Philip and Symonds, Hufeland and 
Hoffman. I would they were true ! But all the symptoms 
look like tokens or expressions of distress; we may hope 
that they are not always such in reality : but how can 



284 Death. 

this be proved? Those who, having seemed to die, 
recovered afterwards and declared that they had under- 
gone no pain, do not convince me of the fact any more 
than the somnambulist, who, upon awaking, assures me 
that he has not dreamed at all, after a whole night of 
action and connected thought and effected purpose. His 
memory retains no traces of the questionable past ; like 
that of the epileptic, who forgets the whole train of events, 
and is astonished after a horrible fit to find his tongue 
bitten, and his face and limbs bruised and swollen. 

Nay, some have proceeded to the paradoxical extreme 
of suggesting that certain modes of death are attended 
with pleasurable sensations, as, for instance, hanging ; and 
a late reviewer, who regards this sombre topic with a most 
cheerful eye, gives us instances which he considers in 
point. I have seen many men hung, forty at least, a 
strangely large number. In all, there were evidences of 
suffering, as far as could be judged by external appearances. 
It once happened that a certain set were slowly executed, 
owing to a maladroit arrangement of the scaffold upon 
which they stood, which gave way only at one end. The 
struggles of such as were half supported were dreadful, 
and those of them who could speak earnestly begged that 
their agonies should be put an end to. 

In former, nay, even in recent times, we are told that 
pirates and robbers have resorted to half-hanging, to ex- 
tort confession as to hidden treasure. Is it possible that 
they can have so much mistaken the means they employ 



Death. 285 

as thus to use pleasurable appliances for the purposes of 
torture ? 

The mistake of most reasoners on the subject, Winslow 
and Hufeland more especially, consists in this, that they 
fix their attention exclusively upon the final moments of 
dissolution. But the act of dying may be in disease, as 
we know it to be in many modes of violence, impalement, 
for example, or crucifixion, very variously protracted and 
progressive. " Insensibly as we enter life,^^ says Hufe- 
land, ^'equally insensibly do we leave it. Man can have 
no sensation of dying.^^ Here the insensibility of death 
completedj that is, of the dead hody^ is strangely predicated 
of the moribund while still living. This transitive condi- 
tion, to use the graphic language of the Southern writer 
whom we have already more than once quoted, is ^^a terra 
incognita, where vitality, extinguished in some tissues, 
smouldering in others, and disappearing gradually from all, 
resembles the region of a volcano, whose eruptions subsid- 
ing, leave the surface covered with cinders and ashes, con- 
cealing the rents and lesions which have on all sides scarred 
and disfigured the face of nature. '' 

Besides this, we have no right to assume, as Hufeland 
has here done, the insensibility of the child at birth. It 
is subject to disease before birth; as soon as it draws a 
breath, it utters loud cries and sobs. To pronounce all 
its actions " mechanical, instinctive, necessary, automa- 
tic,'^ in fact, is a very easy solution of the question; but I 
think neither rational nor conclusive. If you prick it or burn 
25 



286 Death. 

it; you regard its cries as proving sensibility to pain ; but; 
on the application of air to its delicate and hitherto pro» 
tected skin; and the distension of its hitherto quiet lung, 
the same cry^ you say, is mechanical and inexpressive. So 
Leibnitz explained; to his own satisfaction; the struggles 
and moans of the lower animals as automatic; being em- 
barrassed with metaphysical and moral difficulties on the 
score of their intelligence and liability to suffering. But 
no one now espouses his theory; and we must accept; whether 
we can explain them or not; the facts that the lower ani- 
mals are liable to pain during their entire existence; and 
that the heritage of their master iS; from and during birth 
to the last moment of languishing vitality, a sad legacy 
of woe and suffering. 

Unhappily we may appeal, in this discussion; directly 
to the evidence of our senseS; to universal experience and 
observation. Who can doubt the tortures inflicted in 
tetanus ? to alleviate which; indeed; I have more than once 
been solicited for poison. Does not every one know the 
grievous inflictions of cancer; lasting through months and 
yearS; and continuing, as I have myself seeU; within a 
short hour of the absolute extinction of lifC; in spite of 
every effort to relieve it ? The most painful of deaths 
apparently is that which closes the frightful tragedy of 
hydrophobia; and patientS; to hurry it; often ask most 
urgently for any means of prompt destruction. But these 
more intense and acute pangs are not the only form of 
intolerable agony. Unquenchable thirst; a dreadfully pro- 



I 



Death. 287 

gressive suffocation, confusion of the senses and of thought 
— these are inflictions that nature shudderingly recoils 
from, and these, or their manifestations, are scarcely ever 
wanting on the death-bed. 

If any one should ask why I thus endeavor to prove 
what it is revolting to us all to believe or admit, I answer 
first, that truth is always desirable to be known both for 
its own sake and because it is ever pregnant with ultimate 
benefit and utility. More than one moribund has ex- 
pressed to me his surprise and horror — shall I say disap- 
pointment too? — at finding the dark valley of the shadow 
of death so rough and gloomy and full of terrors. Is it 
not better that we should be as thoroughly and adequately 
prepared for the stern reality as may be, and that we 
should summon up all the patience and fortitude requisite 
to bear us through ? When the last moment is actually 
at hand, we can safely assure our friends that they will 
soon reach a state of rest and unconsciousness, and that 
meanwhile, as they die more and more, they will less and 
less feel the pain of dying. Secondly, by appreciating 
properly the nature and amount of the pangs of death, we 
shall be led to a due estimate of the demand for their re- 
lief or palliation, and of the obligation incumbent on us 
to institute every proper effort for that purpose with zeal 
and assiduity. He who believes, with Hufeland, that the 
moribund is insensible, is likely to do little to solace or 
comfort him. 

There are doubtless instances of death entirely easy. 



288 Death. 

^^I wish/^ said Dr. Black, ^^I could hold a pen; I would 
write how pleasant a thing it is to die.''' Dr. George 
Fordyce desired his youngest daughter to read to him. 
When she had been reading some time, he called to her — 
^^Stop: go out of the room; I am going to die.'^ She 
left him, and an attendant, entering immediately, found 
him dead. ^^Is it possible lam dying?'' exclaimed a 
lady patient of mine; ^^I feel as if going into a sweet 
vsleep." ^^I am drowsy; had I better indulge myself?" 
asked Capt. Gr. On my giving him an affirmative answer, 
he turned, and sank into a slumber from which he awoke 
no more. It is indeed pleasant to know that examples 
occur of this unconscious and painless dissolution ; but I 
fear they are comparatively rare exceptions to a natural 
rule ; and I regard it as the duty of the medical profession 
to add to the number by the judicious employment of 
every means in our power. 

And this leads me to a brief consideration of the ques- 
tion so often pressed upon us in one shape or another by 
the friends of our patients, and sometimes by our patients 
themselves : If the tendency of any medicinal or palliative 
agent be to shorten life, while it assuages pain, has the 
physician a right to resort to it ? Even in the latter stages 
of some inflammatory afi"ections, loss of blood, especially 
if carried to fainting, will arrest the sharp pangs, but the 
patient will probably die somewhat sooner : shall we bleed 
him ? Large doses of opium will tranquilize him, or ren- 
der him insensible ; but he will probably sink somewhat 



Death. 289 

earlier into the stupor of death. Shall we administer it, 
or shall we let him linger on in pain, merely that he may 
linger ? Chloroform, ether, and other anaesthetics in full 
dose inspired render us insensible to all forms of anguish, 
and make death as easy, to use the phrase of Hufeland, 
as being born ! Shall we allow our agonized moribund to 
inhale them ? Used in less amount, a degree of relief 
and palliation is procured, but at the risk of exhausting 
or prostrating more promptly the failing energies of the 
system. Shall we avail ourselves of their anaesthetic in- 
fluences, or are they forbidden us, either absolutely or 
partially ? 

These are by some moralists considered very delicate 
questions in ethics. Desgenettes has been highly applauded 
for the reply he made to Bonaparte's suggestion, that it 
would be better for the miserable sick left by the French 
army at Jaffa to be drugged with opium : ^^ It is my 
business to save life, not to destroy it.''' But, in approving 
the physician, we must not harshly condemn the com- 
manding ojficer. When we reflect on the condition of the 
men whom the fortune of war compelled him to abandon, 
and the certainty of a horrible death to each victim from 
wasting disease or Turkish cruelty, a rational philanthropist 
might well desire to smooth their passage to the grave. 

During the employment of torture for the purposes of 
tyranny in Church and State, a physician or surgeon was 
at hand, whose whole duty it was to suspend the process 
whenever it became probable that nature would yield under 

25* 



290 Death. 

its pressure, and the victim would escape through the open- 
ing, glad gates of death. It was then esteemed an act of 
mercy to give, or permit to be given by the executioner, a 
fatal blow, hence called emphatically and justly the coup 
de grace. In the terrible history of the invasion of Russia 
by Napoleon, we shudder to read that, after their expulsion 
from Moscow, the French soldiers, in repassing the fields 
of battles fought days and even weeks previously, found 
many of their comrades, there wounded and left, still 
dragging out a wretched and hopeless existence, amidst 
the corpses of those more fortunately slain outright, and 
perishing miserably and slowly of cold and hunger, and 
festering and gangrenous wounds. One need not surely 
ofier a single argument to prove, all must feel and admit 
that the kindest office of humanity, under the circum- 
stances, would have been to put an end to this indescriba- 
ble mass of protracted wretchedness by the promptest 
means that could be used to extinguish so horrible a life. 
A common case presents itself from time to time to 
every practitioner, in which all hope is avowedly extinct, 
and yet, in consonance with uniform custom, stimulants 
are assiduously prescribed to prolong existence in the midst 
of convulsive and delirious throes, not to be looked on 
without dismay. In some such contingencies, where the 
ultimate result was palpably certain, I have seen them at 
last abandoned as useless and worse, in order that nature, 
irritated and excited, lashed into factitious and transitory 
energy, might sink into repose ; and have felt a melan- 



Death. 291 

choly satisfaction in witnessing the tranquillity, so soft and 
gentle, that soon ensued; the stormy agitation subsiding 
into a calm and peaceful decay. 

Responsibility of the kind I am contemplating, often 
indeed more obvious and definite, presses upon the obstet- 
rician, and is met unreservedly. In embryulcia, one life 
is sacrificed in the hope and with the reasonable prospect 
of saving another more valued: this is done too some- 
times where there is an alternative presented, the Caesa- 
rian section, which destroys neither of absolute necessity, 
but subjects the better life to very great risk. 

Patients themselves frequently prefer the prompter and 
more lenient motives of death which our science refuses to 
inflict. In summing up the motives of suicide in one- 
hundred and thirty-one cases, whose causes are supposed 
to be known, Prevost tells us that thirty-four, more than 
one-fourth of the whole number, committed self-murder 
to rid themselves of the oppressive burden of physical 
disease. Winslow gives us an analysis of thirteen hundred 
and thirty-three suicides from Pinel, Esquirol, Burrows, 
and others. Of these, there were but two hundred and 
fifty that did not present obvious appearances of bodily 
ailment ; and although it is not stated how many of them 
sought death voluntarily as a refuge from physical suffer- 
ing, it would be unreasonable to doubt that this was the 
purpose with a very large proportion. I am far from 
advocating the propriety of yielding to this desire or gra- 
tifying the propensity ; nay, I would, on the other hand, 



292 Death. 

earnestly endeavor to remove or repress it; as is now the 
admitted rule. 

I hold fully, with Pascal, that, according to the prin- 
ciples of Christianity, which in this entirely oppose the 
false notions of paganism, a man ^^ does not possess power 
over his own life.^' I acknowledge and maintain that 
the obligation to perform unceasingly, and to the last and 
utmost of our ability, all the duties which appertain to 
our condition, renders absolutely incompatible the right 
supposed by some to belong to every one to dispose of 
himself at his own will. But I would present the ques- 
tion for the serious consideration of the profession, 
whether there does not, now and then, though very rarely, 
occur an exceptional case, in which they might, upon full 
and frank consultation, be justiJSed before God and man 
in relieving, by the efficient use of anaesthetics, at what- 
ever risk, the ineffable and incurable anguish of a fellow - 
creature laboring under disease of organic destructiveness, 
or inevitably mortal; such, for example, as we are doomed 
to witness in hydrophobia, and even more clearly in some 
instances of cancerous and fungoid degeneration, and in 
the sphacelation of organs necessary to life, or parts so 
connected as to be indispensable, yet not allowing either 
of removal or restoration ? 

I have left myself scarcely time for a few remarks upon 
death, psychologically considered. How is the mind 
affected by the anticipation and actual approach of death ? 
The answer will obviously depend upon and be influenced 



Death. 293 

by a great diversity of contingencies, moral and physical. 
The love of life is an instinct implanted in us for wise 
purposes ; so is the fear of pain. Apart from this, I do 
not believe, as many teach, that there is any instinctive 
fear of death. Education, which instils into us, when 
young, the fear of spectres; religious doctrines, which 
awake in us the terror of ^^ something after death /^ con- 
science, which, when instructed, ^^ makes cowards of us 
all/^ associations of a revolting character, 

" The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, — 
The deep, damp vault, the darkness, and the worm ;" 

these startle and appal us. 

" Man makes a death that nature never made. 
Then on the pouit of his own fancy falls. 
And feels a thousand deaths in fearing- one." 

We sympathize duly with every instinct of nature ; we 
all feel the love of life, and accord readily in the warmest 
expression of it; but we recoil from every strong exhi- 
bition of the fear of death as unreasonable and dastardly. 

When Claudio reminds his noble sister that ^^ death is 
a fearful thing,'' she replies well — ^^and shamed life a 
hateful y But when he rejoins 

'' The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
To what we fear of death ;" 



294 Death. 

we anticipate her in bidding him ^^ Perish! for a faithless 
coward; and a beast V^ 

In the same contemptible and shrinking spirit, Maece- 
nas, in a passage from Seneca, 

" Vita, dura superest bene est 
Hunc mihi vel acuta 
Si sedeam cruce, sustine." 

Among hypochondriacs, we often meet with the seem- 
ingly paradoxical combination of an intense dread of death 
unassociated with any perceptible attachment to life ; a 
morbid and most pitiable condition, which urges some to 
repeated, but ineffectual attempts at suicide. I know not 
a state of mind more utterly wretched. 

Both these sentiments, whether instinctive or educa- 
tional, are, we should observe, very strikingly influenced 
by circumstances. Occasionally, they seem to be oblite- 
rated, or nearly so ; not only in individuals, but in large 
masses, nay, in whole communities; as during great social 
convulsions; through the reign of a devastating pestilence; 
under the shock of repeated disorders of the elements ; as 
in earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storms, and inunda- 
tions; in protracted sieges, and in shipwrecks. The Reign 
of Terror produced this state of feeling in France, and 
thousands went to the scaffold indifferently, or with a jest. 
Boccacio and others have pictured the same state of unde- 
jected despair, if such a phrase be permitted, in which 
men succumb to fate, and say, with a sort of cheerful 



Death. 295 

hardihood; ^' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die/' 
losing thus all dread even of the plague. Pliny the 
younger, in his flight from Mycena, under the fatal shower 
of ashes from Vesuvius, heard, amidst the darkness, the 
prayers of wretches "who desired to die, that they might 
be released from the expectation of death.'' And Byron, 
in his magnificent description of the shipwreck, in Don 
Juan, tells us 

'< Some leaped overboard with dreadful yell, 
As eager to anticipate the grave." 

Shakspeare's Constance, in her grief, draws well the 
character of death, as 

<' Misery's love, 
The hate and terror of prosperity." 

A woman who has lost her honor ; a soldier convicted of 
poltroonery ; a patriot who sees his country enslaved ; a 
miser robbed ; a speculator bankrupt ; a poet unappreci- 
ated, or harshly criticized, as in poor Keats' s case — 

" Strange that the soul, that very fiery particle, 
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article" — 

all these seem to loathe life, or, at any rate, lose much of 
their fondness for it. It is curious to remark, too, how 
little, as in the last-mentioned instance, will suffice to 
extinguish, abruptly or gradually, this usually tenacious 
instinct. A man in York cut his throat, because, as he 



296 Death. 

left in writing, ^^he was tired of buttoning and unbutton- 
ing/' The occurrence of a loathsome but very curable 
disease in a patient of mine^ just when he was about to be 
married, induced him to plunge among the breakers off 
Sullivan's Island, on one of the coldest days of our coldest 
winter. A Pole in New York wrote some verses just 
before the act of self-destruction, implying that he was so 
weary of uncertainty as to the truth of the various theories 
of the present and future life, that he '' had set out on a 
journey to the other world to find out what he ought to 
believe in this/' 

We are always interested in observing the conduct of 
brave men, who exhibit a strongly-marked love of life, with 
little or no fear of death. Dan ton, Camille Desmoulins, 
and Herault Sechelles, who commenced their revolutionary 
career as reckless as they seemed ferocious, having at- 
tained elevation, acquired wealth, and married beautiful 
women, became merciful and prudent. Hunted in their 
turn by the bloodhounds of the time, they made the most 
earnest endeavors to escape, but displayed a noble courage 
in meeting their fate when inevitable. 

It is a trite but true remark, that men will boldly face 
one mode of death, and shrink timidly from another. A 
soldier, whom discipline will lead without flinching " up 
to the imminent deadly breach," will cower before a sea- 
storm. Women, even in the act of suicide, dreading ex- 
plosion and blood, prefer poison and drowning. Men very 



Death. 297 

often clioose firearms and cutting instruments^ wliieh 
habit has made familiar. 

If the nervous or sensorial system escape lesion during 
the ravages of disease, the conduct of the last hour will 
be apt to be consistent with the previous character of the 
individual. Hobbes spoke gravely of death as "a leap in 
the dark.'^ Hume talked lightly of Charon and his 
ferry-boat. Voltaire made verses with his usual levity— 

''Adieu, mes amis I adieu, la compagnie I 
Dans deux heures d'ici, mon ame aneantie 
Sera ce que je tufi deux heures avant ma vie." 

Keats murmured, poetically, '^ I feel the flowers grow- 
ing on my grave.'' Dr. Armstrong died prescribing for 
a patient ; Lord Tenterden, uttering the words '^ Grentle- 
men of the Jury, you will find;'' General Lord Hill, ex- 
claiming "Horrid war!" Dr. Adams, of the Edinburgh 
High School, "It grows dark; the boys may dismiss !" 
The last words of La Place were, " Ge que nous connaissons 
est peu de chose; ce que nous ignorons, est immense!" 

The history of suicide, of death in battle, and of exe- 
cutions, is full of such instances of consistent conduct 
and character. Madame Roland desired to have pen and 
paper accorded to her, at the " Place de la Gruillotine/' 
that she might, as she phrased it, " set down the thoughts 
that were rising in her mind." Sir Thomas More jested 
pleasantly as he mounted the scafi'old. Thistlewood, the 
conspirator, a thoughtful man, remarked to one of his 
26 



298 Death. 

fellow-sufferers tbat^ *^iii five minutes more^ thej would 
be in possession of the great secret/' When Madame de 
Joulanges and her sisters were executed, they chanted 
together the Veni Creator on their way from the prison to 
the fatal spot. Head after head fell under the axe, but 
the celestial strain was prolonged until the very last voice 
was hushed in the sudden silence of death. 

The delirium of the moribund exhibits itself in diver- 
sified and often contrasted manifestations. Symonds 
looks upon it as closely analogous to the condition of the 
mind in dreaming. A popular and ancient error deserves 
mention, only to be corrected; that the mind, at the near 
approach of dissolution, becomes unusually clear, vigorous, 
and active. 

" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,, 
Lets in new light through chinks which Time has made.' 

Excitement of the uncontrolled imagination, as in 
dreams, and other modes of delirium, is frequently mis- 
taken for general mental energy; some suggested associa- 
tion arouses trains of thought that have made deep traces 
in the memory; scenes familiar in early childhood are 
vividly described, and incidents long past recalled with 
striking minuteness. All physicians know the difference 
familiarly presented in diseases, some of which specifi- 
cally occasion despondency and dejection of spirits, while 
others render indifferent or even give rise to exhilaration. 
The former constitute a class unhappily numerous. Cho- 



Death. 299 

lera, which at a distance excites terrors almost insane^ is 
usually attended with a careless stolidity^ when it has 
laid its icy hand upon its victim. The cheerful hopeful- 
ness of the consumptive patient is proverbial ; and in 
many instances of yellow fever, we find the moribund 
patient confident of recovery. These are the exception s, 
however; and we cannot too often repeat that the religious 
prejudice which argues unfavorably of the previous con- 
duct and present character from the closing scene of 
an agitating and painful illness, or from the last words, 
uttered amidst bodily anguish and intellectual confusion, 
is cruel and unreasonable, and ought to be loudly de- 
nounced. We can well enough understand why an Eng- 
lish Elizabeth, Virgin Queen, as history labels her, could 
not lie still for a moment, agitated as she must have been 
by a storm of remorseful recollections, nor restrain her 
shrieks of horror long enough even to listen to a prayer. 
But how often does it happen that '' the wicked has no 
bands in his death ;'^ and the awful example of deep 
despair in the Stainless One, who cried out in his agony 
that he was forsaken of Grod, should serve to deter us 
from the daily repeated and shocking rashness of the 
. decisions against which I am now appealing. 

Some minds have seemed firm enough, it is true, to 
maintain triumphantly this last terrible struggle, and 
resist in a measure at least the depressing influence of 
disease. Such instances cannot, however, be numerous; 
and we should be prepared rather to sympathize with and 



300 Death. 

make all due allowance for human weakness. I have 
seen such moments of yielding as it was deeply painful 
to witness, at the bedside of many of the best of men, 
whose whole lives had been a course of consistent good- 
ness and piety, when warned of impending death, and 
called on to make those preparations which custom has 
unfortunately led us to look upon as gloomy landmarks 
at the entrance of the dark valley. 

One of these, from youth to age a most esteemed and 
valued member of one of our most fervent religious 
bodies, with sobs and tears, and loud wailing, threw the 
pen and paper from him, exclaiming, over and over again, 
^^I will not — I cannot — I must not die!'' Like the 
eccentric Salvini, of whom Spence tells us that he died, 
crying out in a great passion, " Je ne veux pas mourir, 
absolument;'' and Lannes, the bravest of Bonaparte's 
marshals, when mortally wounded, struggled angrily and 
fearfully, shouting with his last breath, ^^ Save me. Napo- 
leon!" 

But I recoil from farther discussion of a topic so full 
of awe and solemn interest, and conclude this prosaic 
^^Thanatopsis" with the Miltonian strain of Bryant, who 
terminates his noble poem, thus styled, in language, 
worthy of the best age and brightest laurel of our 
tongue : — 

"So live, that, when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, that moves 
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 



D E A T 11. oOl 

His chamber in the silent halls of" death, 
Thou go not like the quarry slave at nis^ht, 
Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 



THE END, 



